day in the week: but of "his character" I know nothing personally; I can only speak of his manners, and these have my warmest approbation. But I never judge from manners, for I once had my pocket picked by the civilest gentleman I ever met with; and one of the mildest persons I ever saw was Ali Pacha. Of Mr. Bowles's "character" I will not do him the injustice to judge from the edition of Pope, if he prepared it heedlessly ; nor the justice, should it be otherwise, because I would neither become a literary executioner, nor a personal cne. Mr. Bowles the individual, and Mr. Bowles the editor, appear the two most opposite things imaginable. And he himself one antithesis." I have dwelt for an instant on these circumstances, because it has sometimes been made a subject of bitter reproach to me to have endeavoured to suppress that satire. I never shrunk, as those who know me know, from any personal consequences which could be attached to its publication. Of its subsequent suppression, as I possessed the copyright, I was the best judge and the I won't say "vile," because it is harsh; nor “missole master. The circumstances which occasioned the taken," because it has two syllables too many; but suppression I have now stated; of the motives, each every one must fill up the blank as he pleases. must judge according to his candour or malignity. Mr. Bowles does me the honour to talk of "noble mind,' and "generous magnanimity;" and all this because "the circumstance would have been explained had not the book been suppressed." I see no "nobility of mind” in an act of simple justice; and I hate the word “magnanimity,” because I have sometimes seen it applied to the grossest of impostors by the greatest of fools; but I would have "explained the circumstance,” notwithstanding "the suppression of the book," if Mr. Bowles had expressed any desire that I should. As the "gallant Galbraith" says to "Baillie Jarvie," "Well, the devil take the mistake and all that occasioned it.” I have had as great and greater mistakes made about me personally and poetically, once a month for these last ten years, and never cared very much about ccrrecting one or the other, at least after the first eight-and-forty hours had gone over them. What I saw of Mr. Bowles increased my surprise and regret that he should ever have lent his talents to such a task. If he had been a fool, there would have been some excuse for him; if he had been a needy or a bad man, his conduct would have been intelligible; but he is the opposite of all these; and thinking and feeling as do of Pope, to me the whole thing is unaccountable. However, I must call things by their right names. I cannot call his edition of Pope a "candid” work; and I still think that there is an affectation of that quality not only in those volumes, but in the pamphlets lately published. I "Why yet he doth deny his prisoners." Mr. Bowles says, that "he has seen passages in his letters to Martha Blount, which were never published by me, and I hope never will be by others; which are so gross as to imply the grossest licentiousness." Is this fair I must now, however, say a word or two about Pope, play? It may, or it may not be, that such passages exist; of whom you have my opinion more at large in the un- and that Pope, who was not a monk, although a catholic, published letter on or to (for I forget which) the editor of may have occasionally sinned in word and in deed with "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine;"-and here I doubt woman in his youth; but is this a sufficient ground for that Mr. Bowles will not approve of my sentiments. such a sweeping denunciation? Where is the unmarAlthough I regret having published "English Bards ried Englishman of a certain rank of life, who (proand Scotch Reviewers," the part which I regret the least vided he has not taken orders) has not to reproach is that which regards Mr. Bowles with reference to Pope. | himself between the ages of sixteen and thirty with far Whilst I was writing that publication, in 1807 and 1808, more licentiousness than has ever yet been traced to Mr. Hobhouse was desirous that I should express our Pope? Pope lived in the public eye from his youth upmutual opinion of Pope, and of Mr. Bowles's edition of wards; he had all the dunces of his own time for his his works. As I had completed my outline, and felt enemies, and, I am sorry to say, some, who have not lazy, I requested that he would do so. He did it. His the apology of dulness for detraction, since his death; fourteen lines on Bowles's Pope are in the first edition and yet to what do all their accumulated hints and of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers;" and are quite charges amount;-to an equivocal liaison, with Martha as severe and much more poetical than my own in the Blount, which might arise as much from his infirmities second. On reprinting the work, as I put my name to as from his passions; to a hopeless flirtation with Lady it, I omitted Mr. Hobhouse's lines, and replaced them Mary W. Montagu; to a story of Cibber's; and to two with my own, by which the work gained less than Mr. or three coarse passages in his works. Who could come Bowles. I have stated this in the preface to the second forth clearer from an invidious inquest on a life of fiftyedition. It is many years since I have read that poeni; six years? Why are we to be officiously reminded of but the Quarterly Review, Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, and such passages in his letters, provided that they exist? Is Mr. Bowles himself, have been so obliging as to refresh Mr. Bowles aware to what such rummaging among my memory, and that of the public. I am grieved to "letters" and "stories" might lead? I have myself seen say, that in reading over those lines, I repent of their a collection of letters of another eminent, nay, prehaving so far fallen short of what I meant to express eminent, deceased poet, so abominably gross, and elabupon the subject of Bowles's edition of Pope's Works. orately coarse, that I do not believe that they could be Mr. Bowles says that "Lord Byron knows he does not paralleled in our language. What is more strange, is, deserve this character." I know no such thing. I have that some of these are couched as postscripts to nis met Mr. Bowles occasionally, in the best society in Lon- serious and sentimental letters, to which are tacked hé appeared to me an amiable, well-informed, either a piece of prose, or some verses, of the most and extremely able man. I desire nothing better than hyperbolical indecency. He himself says, that if "obto dine in company with such a mannered man every scenity (using a much coarser word) be the sin again... don; the Holy Ghost, he most certainly cannot be saved." to them in their youth, must laugh at such a ludicrous These letters are in existence, and have been seen by foundation of the charge of a "libertine sort of l‹ ve ;" many besides myself; but would his editor have been while the more serious will look upon those who bring “candid” in even alluding to them? Nothing would forward such charges upon an insulated fact, as fanatics have even provoked me, an indifferent spectator, to or hypocrites, perhaps both. The two are sometimes allude to them, but this further attempt at the deprecia- compounded in a happy mixture. tion of Pope. say opera Mr. Octavius Gilchrist speaks rather irreverently of What should we say to an editor of Addison, who a "second tumbler of hot white-wine negus." What cited the following passage from Walpole's letters to does he mean? Is there any harm in negus? or is it George Montagu? "Dr. Young has published a new book, the worse for being hot? or does Mr. Bowles drink neetc. Mr. Addison sent for the young Earl of Warwick, gus? I had a better opinion of him. I hoped that as he was dying, to show him in what peace a Christian whatever wine he drank was neat ; or at least that, like could die; unluckily he died of brandy: nothing makes the ordinary in Jonathan Wild, "he preferred punch, a Christian die in peace like being maudlin! but don't the rather as there was nothing against it in scripture.” this in Gath where you are." Suppose the editor | I should be sorry to believe that Mr. Bowles was fond introduced it with this preface: "One circumstance is of negus; it is such a "candid” liquor, so like a wishymentioned by Horace Walpole, which, if true, was indeed washy compromise between the passion for wine and flagitious. Walpole informs Montagu that Addison sent the propriety of water. But different writers have for the young Earl of Warwick, when dying, to show divers tastes. Judge Blackstone composed his "Comhim in what peace a Christian could die; but unluckily mentaries" (he was a poet too in his youth), with a he died drunk, etc., etc." Now, although there might bottle of port before him. Addison's conversation was occur on the subsequent, or on the same page, a faint not good for much till he had taken a similar dose! show of disbelief, seasoned with the expression of "the Perhaps the prescription of these two great men was same candour" (the same exactly as throughout the not inferior to the very different one of a soi-disant book), I should say that this editor was either foolish or poet of this day, who, after wandering amongst the hills, false to his trust; such a story ought not to have been returns, goes to bed, and dictates his verses, being fed admitted, except for one brief mark of crushing in- by a by-stander with bread and butter, during the dignation, unless it were completely proved. Why the tion. words "if true?" That "if" is not a peace-maker. Why I now come to Mr. Bowles's "invariable principles of talk of “Cibber's testimony" to his licentiousness? To poetry." These Mr. Bowles and some of his correspondwhat does this amount? that Pope, when very young, ents pronounce "unanswerable;" and they are “unanwas once decoyed by some noblemen and the player to swered," at least by Campbell, who seems to have been a house of carnal recreation. Mr. Bowles was not always astounded by the title. The sultan of the time being, a clergyman; and when he was a very young man, was offered to ally himself to the king of France, because he never seduced into as much? If I were in the humour" he hated the word league:" which proves that the for story-telling, and relating little anecdotes, I could tell a much better story of Mr. Bowles than Cibber's, upon much better authority, viz. that of Mr. Bowles himself. It was not related by him in my presence, but in that of a third person, whom Mr. Bowles names oftener than once in the course of his replies. This gentleman related it to me as a humorous and witty anecdote; and so it was, whatever its other characteristics might be. But should I, from a youthful frolic, brand Mr. Bowles with a "libertine sort of love," or with "licentiousness?" is he the less now a pious or a good man for not having always been a priest? No such thing; I am willing to believe him a good man, almost as good a man as Pope, but no better. Padishan understood French. Mr. Campbell has no "Quoth he, there was a Ship ; " not by my own wish, but called upon by the frequent recurrence to my name in the pamphlets), I am like an Irishman in a "row," "any body's customer." I shall therefore say a word or two on the "Ship." The truth is, that in these days the grand "primum mobile” of England is cant; cant political, cant poetical, It is no affair of mine, but having once begun (certainly cant religious, cant moral; but always cant, multiplied through all the varieties of life. It is the fashion, and while it lasts will be too powerful for those who can only exist by taking the tone of the time. I say cant, because it is a thing of words, without the smallest influence upon human actions; the English being no wiser, no better, and much poorer, and more divided amongst themselves, as well as far less moral, than they were before the prevalence of this verbal decorum. This hysterical horror of poor Pope's not very well ascertained, and never fully proved amours (for even Cibber owns that he prevented the somewhat perilous Adventure in which Pope was embarking) sounds very virtuous in a controversial pamphlet; but all men of the world who know what life is, or at least what it was Mr. Bowles asserts that Campbell's "Ship of the Line" derives all its poetry not from "art" but from “nature.” "Take away the waves, the winds, the sun, etc., etc. one will become a stripe of blue bunting; and the other a piece of coarse canvas on three tall poles." Very true; take away "the waves," "the winds," and there will be no ship at all, not only for poetical, but for any other purpose; and take away "the sun," and we must read Mr. Bowles's pamphlet by candle-light. But the "poetry" of the "Ship" does not depend on "the waves," etc.; on the contrary, the "Ship of the Line" confers is own poetry upon the waters, and heightens theirs. I and Turkish craft, which were obliged to "cut and run do not deny, that the "waves and winds," and above | before the wind, from their unsafe anchorage, some for all "the sun,” are highly poetical; we know it to our Tenedos, some for other isles, some for the main, and cost, by the many descriptions of them in verse: but some it might be for eternity. The sight of these little if the waves bore only the foam upon their bosoms, if scudding vessels, darting over the foam in the twilight, the winds wafted only the sea-weed to the shore, if the now appearing and now disappearing between the waves sun shone neither upon pyramids, nor fleets, nor for- in the cloud of night, with their peculiarly white sails tresses, would its beams be equally poetical? I think (the Levant sails not being of "coarse canvas,” but of not: the poetry is at least reciprocal. Take away "the white cotton), skimming along as quickly, but less safely ship of the line" "swinging round" the "calm water," than the sea-mews which hovered over them; their eviand the calm water becomes a somewhat monotonous dent distress, their reduction to fluttering specks in the thing to look at, particu arly if not transparently clear; distance, their crowded succession, their littleness, as witness the thousands who pass by without looking on contending with the giant elèment, which made our it at all. What was it attracted the thousands to the stout forty-four's teak timbers (she was built in India) launch? they might have seen the poetical "calm water," | creak again; their aspect and their motion, all struck at Wapping, or in the "London Dock," or in the Pad-me as something far more "poetical" than the mere dington Canal, or in a horse-pond, or in a slop-basin, or broad, brawling, shipless sea, and the sullen winds, in any other vase. They might have heard the poetical could possibly have been without them. winds howling through the chinks of a pig-sty, or the garret-window; they might have seen the sun shining on a footman's livery, or on a brass warming-pan; but could the "calm water," or the "wind," or the "sun," make all, or any of these, "poetical?" I think not."poetical" by day in the sun, and by night perhaps still Mr. Bowles admits "the ship" to be poetical, but only from those accessories: now if they confer poetry so as to make one thing poetical, they would make other things poetical; the more so, as Mr. Bowles calls a "ship of the line" without them, that is to say, its "masts and sails and streamers," "blue bunting," and "coarse canvas," and "tall poles." So they are; and porcelain is clay, and man is dust, and flesh is grass, and yet the two latter at least are the subjects of much poesy. The Euxine is a noble sea to look upon, and the port of Constantinople the most beautiful of harbours, and yet I cannot but think that the twenty sail of the line, some of one hundred and forty guns, rendered it more more, for the Turks illuminate their vessels of war in a manner the most picturesque-and yet all this is artificia. As for the Euxine, I stood upon the Symplegades I s od by the broken altar still exposed to the winds upon one of them-I felt all the "poetry" of the situation, as I repeated the first lines of Medea; but would not that "poetry" have been heightened by the Argo? It was so even by the appearance of any merchant vessel arriving from Odessa. But Mr. Bowles says, Did Mr. Bowles ever gaze upon the sea? I presume "why bring your ship off the stocks?" for no reason hat he has, at least upon a sea-piece. Did any painter that I know, except that ships are built to be launched. ever paint the sea only, without the addition of a ship, The water, etc., undoubtedly HEIGHTENS the poetical boat, wreck, or some such adjunct? Is the sea itself a | associations, but it does not make them; and the ship more attractive, a more moral, a more poetical object amply repays the obligation: they aid each other; the with or without a vessel, breaking its vast but fatiguing water is more poetical with the ship-the ship less so monotony? Is a storm more poetical without a ship? without the water. But even a ship, laid up in dock, is or, in the poem of the Shipwreck, is it the storm or the a grand and poetical sight. Even an old boat, keel upship which most interests? both much, undoubtedly; but wards, wrecked upon the barren sand, is a "poetical" without the vessel, what should we care for the tempest? object (and Wordsworth, who made a poem about a It would sink into mere descriptive poetry, which in washing-tub and a blind boy, may tell you so as wel itself was never esteemed a high order of that art. as I); whilst a long extent of sand and unbroken water without the boat, would be as like dull prose as any pamphlet lately published. What makes the poetry in the image of the "maròle waste of Tadmor," or Grainger's "Ode to Solitude," so much admired by Johnson? Is it the "marble," or the "waste,” the artificial or the natural object? The "waste" is like all other wastes; but the "marble” of Palmyra makes the poetry of the passage as of the I look upon myself as entitled to talk of naval matters, at least to poets:—with the exception of Walter Scott, Moore, and Southey, perhaps (who have been voyagers), I have swum more miles than all the rest of them together now living ever sailed, and have lived for months and months on ship-board; and during the whole period of my life abroad, have scarcely ever passed a month out of sight of the ocean: besides being brought up from two years till ten on the brink of it. I recol-place. lect, when anchored off Cape Sigæum, in 1810, in an The beautiful but barren Hymettus, the whole coast English frigate, a violent squall coming on at sunset, so of Attica, her hills and mountains, Pentelicus, Anchesviolent as to make us imagine that the ship would part mus, Philopappus, etc., etc., are in theinselves poetical, cable, or drive from her anchorage. Mr. Hobhouse and and would be so if the name of Athens, of Athenians, myself, and some officers, had been up the Dardanelles and her very ruins, were swept from the earth. But to Abydos, and were just returned in time. The aspect am I to be told that the "nature" of Attica would be of a storm in the Archipelago is as poetical as need be, more poetical without the "art" of the Acropolis? of the sea being particularly short, dashing, and dangerous, the Temple of Theseus? and of the still all Greek and and the navigation intricate and broken by the isles and glorious monuments of her exquisitely artificial genius? currents. Cape Sigæum, the tumuli of the Troad, Lem- Ask the traveller what strikes him as most poetical, nos, Tenedos, all added to the associations of the time. the Parthenon, or the rock on which it stands? The But what seemed the most "poetical" of all at the mo- COLUMNS of Cape Colonna, or the Cape itself? The ment were the numbers (about two hundred) of Greek | rocks, at the foot of it, or the recollection that Faconer'. ship was bulged upon them. There are a thousand rocks and capes, far more picturesque than those of the Acropolis and Cape Sunium in themselves; what are they to a thousand scenes in the wilder parts of Greece, of Asia Minor, Switzerland, or even of Cintra in Portugal, or to many scenes of Italy, and the Sierras of Spain? But it is the "art," the columns, the temples, the wrecked vessel, which give them their antique and their modern poetry, and not the spots themselves. Without them, the spots of earth would be unnoticed and unknown; buried, like Babylon and Nineveh, in indistinct confusion, without poetry, as without existence: but to whatever spot of earth these ruins were transported, if they were capable of transportation, like the obelisk, and the sphinx, and the Memnon's head, there they would still exist in the perfection of their beauty, and in the pride of their poetry. I opposed, and will ever oppose, the robbery of ruins from Athens, to instruct the English in sculpture; but why did I so? The ruins are as poetical in Piccadilly as they were in the Parthenon; but the Parthenon and its rock are less so without them. Such is the poetry of art. sea, and the innumerable islands which constitute the site of this extraordinary city. The very Cloace of Tarquin at Rome are as poetical as Richmond Hill; many will think more so. Take away Rome, and leave the Tiber and the seven hills, in the nature of Evander's time; let Mr. Bowles, or Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Southey, or any of the other "naturals," make a poem upon them, and then see which is most poetical, their production, or the commonest guide-book which tells you the road from St. Peter's to the Coliseum, and informs you what you will see by the way. The ground interests in Virgil, because it will be Rome, and not because it is Evander's rural domain. Mr. Bowles then proceeds to press Homer into his service, in answer to a remark of Mr. Campbell's, that "Homer was a great describer of works of art." Mr. Bowles contends, that all his great power, even in this, depends upon their connexion with nature. The "shield of Achilles derives its poetical interest from the subjects described on it." And from what does the spear of Achilles derive its interest? and the helmet and the Mr. Bowles contends, again, that the pyramids of mail worn by Patroclus, and the celestial armour, and Egypt are poetical, because of "the association with the very brazen greaves of the well-booted Greeks? Is boundless deserts," and that a "pyramid of the same it solely from the legs, and the back, and the breast, and dimensions" would not be sublime in "Lincoln's Inn | the human body, which they inclose? In that case, it Fields;" not so poetical, certainly; but take away the would have been more poetical to have made them fight pyramids," and what is the "desert ?" Take away naked; and Gulley and Gregson, as being nearer to a Stone-henge from Salisbury plain, and it is nothing state of nature, are more poetical, boxing in a pair of more than Hounslow Heath, or any other uninclosed drawers, than Hector and Achilles in radiant armour, down. It appears to me that St. Peter's, the Coliseum, and with heroic weapons. the Pantheon, the Palatine, the Apollo, the Laocoon, Instead of the clash of helmets, and the rushing of the Venus di Medicis, the Hercules, the dying Gladiator, chariots, and the whizzing of spears, and the glancing the Moses of Michel Angelo, and all the higher works of swords, and the cleaving of shields, and the piercing of Canova (I have already spoken of those of ancient of breast-plates, why not represent the Greeks and Greece, still extant in that country, or transported to Trojans like two savage tribes, tugging and tearing, and England), are as poetical as Mont Blanc or Mount Etna, kicking, and biting, and gnashing, foaming, grinning, and perhaps still more so, as they are direct manifestations gouging, in all the poetry of martial nature, unencumof mind, and presuppose poetry in their very concep-bered with gross, prosaic, artificial arms, an equal sution; and have, moreover, as being such, a something perfluity to the natural warrior, and his natural poet? of actual life, which cannot belong to any part of inani- Is there any thing unpoetical in Ulysses striking the mnate nature, unless we adopt the system of Spinosa, that the world is the deity. There can be nothing more poetical in its aspect than the city of Venice: does this depend upon the sea, or the canals ?— horses of Rhesus with his bow (having forgotten his thong), or would Mr. Bowles have had him kick them with his foot, or smack them with his hand, as being more unsophisticated? In Gray's Elegy, is there an image more striking than The dirt and sea-weed whence proud Venice rose !'' his "shapeless sculpture?" Of sculpture in general, Is it the canal which runs between the palace and the it may be observed, that it is more poetical than nature prison, or the "Bridge of Sighs" which connects them, itself, inasmuch as it represents and bodies forth that that render it poetical? Is it the "Canal Grande," or ideal beauty and sublimity which is never to be found the Rialto which arches it, the churches which tower in actual nature. This at least is the general opinion over it, the palaces which line, and the gondolas which but, always excepting the Venus di Medicis, I differ glide over the waters, that render this city more poetical from that opinion, at least as far as regards female than Rome itself? Mr. Bowles will say, perhaps, that beauty, for the head of Lady Charlemont (when I first the Rialto is but marble, the palaces and churches only saw her, nine years ago) seemed to possess all that stone, and the gondolas a "coarse" black cloth, thrown sculpture could require for its ideal. I recollect seeing over some planks of carved wood, with a shining bit of something of the same kind in the head of an Albanian fantastically-formed iron at the prow, "without" the girl, who was actually employed in mending a road in And I tell him that without these the water the mountains, and in some Greek, and one or two would be nothing but a clay-coloured ditch, and who- | Italian faces. But of sublimity, I have never seen any ever says the contrary, deserves to be at the bottom of thing in human nature at all to approach the expression that where Pope's heroes are embraced by the mud- of sculpture, either in the Apollo, the Moses, or other nymphs. There would be nothing to make the canal of the sterner works of ancient or modern art. of Venice more poetical tnan that of Paddington, were it not for the artificial adjuncts above mentioned, alhough it is a perfectly natural canal, formed by the water. 4 Let us examine a little further this "babble of green fields," and of bare nature in general, as superior to artificial imagery, for the voetical purposes of the fine arts. length, but of its symmetry; and, making allowance for eastern hyperbole and the difficulty of finding a discreet image for a female nose in nature, it is perhaps as gooɑ a figure as any other. In landscape painting, the great artist does not give you a literal copy of a country, but he invents and composes one. Nature, in her actual aspect, does not furnish him with such existing scenes as he requires. Even where he presents you with some famous city, or Art is not inferior to nature for poetical purposes. celebrated scene from mountain or other nature, it What makes à regiment of soldiers a more noble objec must be taken from some particular point of view, and of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms, thei with such light, and shade, and distance, etc. as serve dresses, their banners, and the art and artificial sym not only to heighten its beauties, but to shadow its de-metry of their position and movements. A Highland formities. The poetry of nature alone, exactly as she er's plaid, a Mussulman's turban, and a Roman toga appears, is not sufficient to bear him out. The very sky are more poetical than the tattooed or untattooed butof his painting is not the portrait of the sky of nature;tocks of a New-Sandwich savage, although they were it is a composition of different skies, observed at dif-described by William Wordsworth himself like the ferent times, and not the whole copied from any particu- "idiot in his glory." lar 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. Of sculpture I have just spoken. It is 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, he 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 improving upon all, as the Greek of old did in embodying his Venus. I have seen as many mountains as most men, and more fleets than the generality of landsmen: and, to my mind, a large convoy, with a few sail of the line to conduct them, is as noble and as poetical a prospect as all that inanimate nature can produce. I prefer the "mast of some great ammiral," with all its tackle, to the Scotch fir or the Alpine tannen: and think that more poetry has been made out of it. In what does the infinite superiority of "Falconer's Shipwreck," over all other shipwrecks, consist? In his admirable application of the terms of his art; in a poet-sailor's description of the sailor's fate. These very terms, by his application, make the strength and reality of his poem. Why? because he was a poet, and in the hands of a poet art will not be found less ornamental than nature. It is precisely in general nature, and in stepping out of his element, that Falconer fails; where he digresses to speak of ancient Greece, and "such branches of learning." Ask a portrait painter to describe his agonies in accommodating the faces with which Nature and his sitters have crowded his painting-room to the principles of his art; with the exception of perhaps ten faces in as many millions, there is not one which he can venture to give without shading much and adding more. Nature, exactly, simply, barely nature, will make no great artist In Dyer's Grongar Hill, upon which his fame rests, of any kind, and least of all a poet-the most artificial, the very appearance of Nature herself is moralized into perhaps, of all artists in his very essence. With regard an artificial image: to natural imagery, the poets are obliged to take some of their best illustrations from art. You say that " a fountain is as clear or clearer than glass," to express its beauty "O fons Bandusiæ, splendidior vitro !" 'Thus is Nature's vesture wrought, And here also we have the telescope, the misuse of which, from Milton, has rendered Mr. Bowles so iri In the speech of Mark Antony, the body of Cæsar is umphant over Mr. Campbell: displayed, but so also is his mantle "So we mistake the future's face, And here a word, en passant, to Mr. Campbell⚫ “As yon summits, soft and fair, Which, to those who journey near, If the poet had said that Cassius had run his fist through the rent of the mantle, it would have had more of Mr. Bowles's "nature" to help it; but the artificial dagger is more poetical than any natural hand without it. Is not this the original of the far-famed 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." Solomcn, 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 statue was like that of "a tower," it would have een as poetical as if he had compared her to a tree. "The virtuous Marcia towers above her sex, 's an instance of an artificial image to express a moral superiority. But Solomon, it is probable, did not compare his beloved's nose to a "tower" on account of its ""Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, 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 shak thou come, and no further," and is obeyed, is not less sublime and poetical than the angry waves which vainiy break beneath it. Mr. Bowles makes the chief part of a ship's poesy depend on the "wind:" then why is a ship unuer sai' more poetical than a hog in a high wind? The hog is all nature, the ship is all art, coarse canvas,” “blue. bunting," and "tall poles;" both are violently acted |