I must oppose your Lordship, Marte meo, and am not much afraid of the result; for, magna est veritas, et prevalebit.

Your observations, in answer to what I said of parts of POPE's moral character, may be comprised in few words. It was far from my heart to charge him with a "libertine sort of love," on account of the errors or frailties of youth. I disdained, in the Life of POPE, to make any allusion to CIBBER'S well-known anecdote. It would have been fanatic or hypocritical in me to have done so. When I spoke of his "libertine kind of love," I alluded to the general tone of his language to Lady MARY, and many of those with whom he corresponded from youth to age. I suppressed, with indignation, the Imitation of HORACE, which I believe he wrote the most obscene and daring piece of profligacy that ever issued from the press, since the days of CHARLES the Second. I deduced no trait of his character from it, though it was not written when youth and gaiety might, in some measure, have palliated the offence, but when he was fortytwo years of age. But though I had no tincture, I hope, in my feelings, of hypocrisy, or fanaticism, I thought it a duty to society to touch on one prominent feature in his character, which shews itself in his correspondence.

As to the omission of the fact of his benevolence to SAVAGE, it was inadvertence,culpable, I con

fess; but if I have spoken of his "general benevo"lence," I may be pardoned, I hope, for an omission, which, at all events, was not intentional; but your Lordship's animadversion on which I own to be just.

"Should some more sober critic come abroad,
"If wrong, I smile; if right, I kiss the rod."

Having touched on these points, I advance to meet your Lordship on the ground of those principles of poetical criticism, by which I adventured to estimate POPE's rank and station in his art.

If I cannot prove those principles invulnerable, even when your Lordship assails them; if I cannot answer all your arguments as plainly and as distinctly as you have adduced them; the term "invariable" I shall instantly discard.

On the contrary, if, noticing any arguments fairly, I turn them against you; if, without avoiding the full force of any, I rebut them satisfactorily; I shall have more reason than ever to think those principles INVARIABLE, which even Lord BYRON

cannot overturn.

I shall first place before your Lordship, and the public, my sentiments, as they stand recorded in the tenth volume of POPE's Works. They are these: I have often quoted them in part, but I find it necessary, in consequence of so many gross falsifications, to transcribe the greater part, that what I

have said may be seen in connection, and under one view.

"I presume it will readily be granted, that 'all images drawn from what is beautiful or sublime in the 'works of NATURE, are MORE beautiful and sublime 'than any images drawn from ART;' and that they are therefore, per se, more poetical.*

"In like manner, those PASSIONS of the human heart, which belong to Nature in general, are, per se, MORE ADAPTED to the HIGHER SPECIES of Poetry, than those which are derived from incidental and transient

• By "poctical," I mean, passim, "adapted to the higher spe "cies of poetry," as it is expressed in the second proposition. The most contemptible of my opponents, always excepting one, has built up a laborious piece of ostentatious nonsense "to "prove" that "no object is poetical" in art or nature, per se. The definition here given will nullify one half of his book at once; but I do not care one jot whether he has " proved" this, as he manfully asserts, or not. I said, "I trusted it would be granted;" but if it be not, I then appeal to those who have so pourtrayed certain objects, and whose descriptions of such objects are more sublime or beautiful than they could make them, with all their genius, from any objects of art. SHAKESPEARE could not describe a canal, and by his description make it half so poetical as he has made the wild and wandering river, in the Two Gentlemen of Verona; nor could he make the Two Gentlemen of Verona so poetical as Macbeth. Why? because the subject would not admit of it. And yet Mr. CAMPBELL advances, as an argument, such despicable nonsense.

† It should be, “than incidental and transient manners.” Mr. CAMPBELL, in the New Monthly, thinks it an argument to attack this verbal inadvertence; thinking his ship defended by the shift of such a side-wind!

MANNERS. A description of a Forest is more poetical* than a description of a cultivated Garden; and the Passions which are pourtrayed in the Epistle of an Eloisa, render such a poem† more poetical, (whatever might be the difference of merit in point of execution,) intrinsically more poetical, than a poem founded on the characters, incidents, and modes of artificial life; for instance, the Rape of the Lock.

"If this be admitted, the rule by which we would estimate POPE's general poetical character would be obvious.

"Let me not, however, be considered as thinking that the subject alone constitutes poetical excellency. The execution is to be taken into consideration at the same time; for, with Lord HARVEY, we might fall asleep over the "Creation" of BLACKMORE, but be alive to the touches of animation and satire in BOILEAU. The subject, and the execution, therefore, are equally to be considered;-the one respecting the Poetry,— the other, the art and powers of the Poet. The poetical

* Supposing the description equally faithful.

+ As to subject, of which only I am here speaking.

Would the reader think it possible, after what has been so repeatedly said, that one obscure writer, who has lately come into the arena, has absolutely quoted the first part of this sentence, and left off before he came to the full stop, because BLACKMORE stared him in the face, and told him what deliberate falsehood it was to represent me as making the subject alone a proof of excellence MORE than the genius of the poet? To what miserable shifts is such a perverter reduced! Triumphant must my arguments be, or it would not be necessary to falsify them, in the very face of the sentence that stood before him, and upbraided his wilful fraud!

subject, and the art and talents of the Poet, should always be kept in mind; and I imagine it is for want of observing this rule, that so much has been said, and so little understood, of the real ground of POPE's character as a Poet.

"If you say he is not one of the first Poets that England, and the polished literature of a polished æra can boast,

Recte necne crocos floresque perambulat Atti
Fabula si dubitem, clamant perîsse pudorem
Cuncti pene patres.

"If you say that he stands poetically pre-eminent, in the highest sense, you must deny the principles of criticism, which I imagine will be acknowledged by all.

"In speaking of the poetical subject, and the powers of execution; with regard to the first, POPE cannot be classed among the highest order of poets;* with regard to the second, none ever was his superior. It is futile to judge of one composition by the rules of another. To say that Pope, in this sense, is not a poet, is to say that a didactic Poem is not a Tragedy, and that a Satire is not an Ode. POPE must be judged according to the rank in which he stands, among those whose delineations are taken more from manners than from NATURE. When I say that this is his predominant character, I must be insensible to every thing exquisite in poetry, if I did not except, instanter, the Epistle of Eloisa: but this can only be considered according to its class; and if I say that it seems to me superior to

That is, not with the poets who have conceived and executed, created and embellished, an epic like Paradise Lost, of a tragedy like Macbeth or Othello