1. A Letter to the B. Hox. Lord Byronsiqued Fabres. 2. Two Letters to the Rt Hon Lord Byron 3. A letter to the Reo : W.2. Booles 7821. 1821. all from the Pamphleteer. & referring to Bepon's estimate of ope 1822 YOUR "Letter on the Rev. W. L. Bowles's Strictures" is not the least poetical of your works. The impassioned vindication of the poesy with which genius can surround all works in which the all-interesting mind of man can be employed, does no less honor to your feelings as a man, than to your taste as a poet. But disputants ever caricature the faults and burlesque the beauties of their antagonists, at the same time that they shade the defects and emblazon the merits of their friends. Your Lordship's chivalrous and enthusiastic zeal for Pope's character has led you to mistake principles and to misrepresent conduct. Your generosity engaged you to become the advocate of Pope, and your ardor in the cause of your client suggested what he required, not what truth and reason warranted. With the fervor of a poet too, you persuaded yourself that forcible statement and clear illustration were proofs of undoubted truth and unequivocal justice. Your defence of Pope's moral character I admit to be as just as it is manly. Your picture of English cant possesses a moral truth and grandeur that shrivels up at once every fool's face that looks upon it. You depart from truth, and nature, and poetry, when you represent Gray's Odes as encumbrances on the glory of his Elegy, and all your subsequent criticism is perverse and unjust. My reasons I shall assign with all the freedom, which, as a poet and as a critic, you invite. HARVARD C+6: LICRARY DEPOSIT DY THE LILRARY OF THE Were I to depreciate the Elegy, I should be guilty of the offence which I censure. Your Lordship justly denounces the perverse pedantry of admiring poetry according to its classification, and yet in the same page you prefer the Elegy to the Odes. Why? only to prepare for a vigorous defence of the "Elegy on an unfortunate Lady," or the " Essay on Man." I venture to say in the name of all disinterested lovers of poetry, that the sublime, impassioned, high-finished poetry, of the "Progress of Poesy," is as far superior to the "Elegy," as the "Pleasures of Hope," is superior to "Blair's Sermons." Lord Byron, when he is not making a case for the "Essay on Man," would be the best of judges on the subject. I abstain from quoting from an ode so rapturous and so impressed on every poetical mind; but when you, my Lord, even in the character of an advocate for Pope, called the Elegy "the corner-stone of Gray's glory," did you recollect the ode on Eton College? "The stings of falsehood those shall try, Surely the enamored enthusiast of ethical poetry cannot place lines like these below the "Elegy." But the bold and bullying paradox which insensibly led your Lordship to calumniate Virgil, Milton, Cowper, and Poetry, I must transcribe: "In my mind, the highest of all poetry is ethical poetry, as the highest of all earthly objects must be moral truth."-"In my mind, the ethical is the highest of all poetry, because it does that in perse, which the greatest of men have wished to accomplish in prose." W. L. Bowles must envy the talent which such flings indicate. If, in defence of his creed, he can ever have occasion to invoke ingenuity to supply the place of truth, and assertion to appear equivalent to reason, he may find a model of high authority. What is moral truth, my Lord? Suppose me not petulantly to ask the question, but really consider how various and prosaic the theories upon that subject are, and allow that with poetry they are but slightly connected. A version of the decalogue in metre is but ordinary poetry. You have confidently appealed to Jesus Christ and to Socrates as standards in prose; but surely your Lordship is aware that they have left no writings, poetical or prosaic." He that drives fat oxen must himself be fat." Architecture must be the highest of all arts, as the highest of all artificial objects are church-spires. There have been histories of England in verse, but I believe they are superseded by Hume's prose. The finest execution by Pope of |