The commencement, my Lord, is ominous. Mr. BOWLES never said, nor is it consistent with the principles he has adopted to say, Mr. CAMPBELL'S ship derives ALL its poetry from nature. If this misstatement, in principio, was intentional, I need not have appealed to you for my character of candour.

Mr. BowLES said, and says, "that poetical beauty "in a ship depends not on art but nature."* ALL its poetry, he instantly admits, it does not derive from nature; but its poetical beauty depends upon nature; for the sails would not swell, the streamers would not flow, the motion would cease-its LIFE, which Mr. CAMPBELL speaks of, would be extinct.

But you say the poetry of the ship does not depend on the waves, &c. I think it does; for this reason,—that all this beauty, motion, and life, would be at once lost and extinct. True, nor can I for a moment think otherwise; thus seen, and thus asso. ciated, "the ship confers its own poetry upon the "waters, and heightens theirs," but NOT BEFORE the elements of nature have ENABLED IT TO DO so; and, therefore, its primary poetical beauty depends on nature, not art,

The least attention may shew there is not here any contradiction. A ship on the stocks gives the idea of the power of the human mind, strength, &c. and then is adapted to poetry, as CRABBE has proved; therefore it does not derive all its poetry from nature, but for its greatest poetical beauty (and let Mr. CAMPBELL describe it) it depends on the accessaries OF NATURE.

66

You say, take away the WINDS and waves, and there will be NO SHIP at all! And "take away the 86 sun, and you must read Mr. BowLES's pamphlet by candle-light." Read it how or when you will, the sun will be more poetical than a candle; and the seas, that "speak in the EAST and the WEST at "ONCE," will not depend on the ship for poetical sublimity, (but the ship will on them,) any more than the sun will depend upon Lord BYRON'S poetry. And then I ask you, my Lord, this question, (begging you to remember my prínciples only require that the works of nature, which are beautiful and sublime, are more poetical, abstractedly, than any works of art,)-whether the sun, the waves, and winds, are, per se, more poetical without the ship or the ship, per se, without the waves, &c. &c.? The poetry, therefore, is not reciprocal; for the ship can give no beauty till the elements of nature, on which its beauty depends, enable it to do so. Then it gives and receives. But, my Lord, you must remember, that when I answered Mr. CAMPBELL, (and I do not think either he or your Lordship can make my good ship surrender,) he made no distinction at all, but coloured his rich descriptions with all the hues of nature, and then advanced to shew the poetical beauties of ARrt.

But the water is calm, and its monotony requires to be broken; and this " calmness," which is one feature of this mighty element, may be contem

plated at Wapping, in the London Dock, Paddington Canal, a horse-pond, or any other vessel!

No: for though the water at Wapping, the London Dock, in the Paddington Canal, a HORSE-POND, or any OTHER vessel, be calm, it is not poetical. But your argument is this. "The sea is calm; the "water in a horse-pond, or any other vessel, "is calm; therefore the calm water in a horse"pond is as poetical as the sea!" No, my Lord: for the sea cannot be made unpoetical,* and your great powers cannot make the water in a horsepond, or ANY OTHER VESSEL, poetical: and I will conclude with CowPER's description of the calm sea, whom, however, you call NO POET, and whom I think an original, pathetic, and great poet.

"OCEAN exhibits, fathomless and broad,
"Much of the power and majesty of God!
"He swathes about the swelling of the deep,
"That shines and rests, as infants smile and sleep.

"Vast as it is, it answers, as it flows,

"The breathings of the lightest air that blows.
"Curling and whitening over all the waste,
"The rising waves obey the increasing blast."

But we must stop before the storm comes on, for I wish only to shew how this "monotonous"

Unless described as BLACKMORE has done it; and this distinction I beg to be remembered here. A bad poet may make the most sublime image contemptible; but a good poet cannot make a contemptible image, as a mouse-trap, for instance, sublime.

object can, in its calmest state, and without a single ship, or any accompaniments, be rendered poetical.

In fact, it does not seem to me, that your Lordship makes distinction between the SEA in painting, and the SEA in poetry.

"The sun is poetical," by your Lordship's admission; and to our cost, you say, by the many descriptions of it in verse. But to follow your

argument.

"If the waves bore only foam upon their bosoms; "if the winds wafted only sea-weed to the shore; "if the sun shone neither upon pyramids, nor "fleets, nor fortresses, would its beams be equally "poetical ?" Answer :

If the waves bore only foam upon their bosoms, the ocean would be equally sublime, far from every track of vessel, every intrusion of man.

The ocean, I affirm, wants not the accessaries of any thing human to make it SUBLIME, and therefore poetical. It is poetical, though not equally picturesque or beautiful, with or without them. The ideas it excites of Almighty power are those of sublimity, the highest poetical sublimity, which proudly rejects any associations or accessaries of human art, or of human kind, to make it more So. "The deep uttereth his voice," is one of the most sublime of the many sublime passages relating to it in the scriptures. We have no occasion to make it more poetical to say, "there go the

ships;" but the ship, moving beautiful to the sight, and seeming, as it were, a creature of the vast element, and made doubly interesting, as an object of beauty, by those accessaries of nature, without which it is nothing; a ship so seen adds to the picture of poetical beauty, but not to the more awful ideas of SUBLIMITY, which are far more poetical. In sunshine, in calm, in tempest, by night, by day, in its deepest solitudes, it wants nothing of art to make it sublime, as speaking every where, "in the east and "in the west," in the north and the south, with one everlasting voice, 'Infinitude and Power.' What can be more sublime than this verse of the Psalmist? "If I take the wings of the morning, " and dwell in the UTTERMOST PARTS OF THE SEA, "even there shall thy hand lead me."

"if

To return" if the waves bore only foam upou "their bosoms;"-" if the winds wafted only sea. "weed to the shore;"-"if the sun had neither "pyramids, nor fleets, nor fortresses, to shine "upon;" if it shone upon none of the emmets of earth; it would be equally a stupendous object, in the visible creation, per se, and equally SUBLIME; and it would be poetical, equally poetical, whether it shone on pyramids or posts, fortresses or pig"sties," a "brass warming-pan, or a footman's

66

* Suppose man not upon earth, might not God have placed there other intelligent beings, to whom the sun would be sublime?