ceded, and which shames them and theirs for ever and ever. I shall be told that amongst those I have been (or, it may be still, am) conspicuous— true, and I am ashamed of it. I have been amongst the builders of this Babel, attended by a confusion of tongues, but never amongst the envious destroyers of the classic temple of our predecessor. I have loved and honoured the fame and name of that illustrious and unrivalled man, far more than my own paltry renown, and the trashy jingle of the crowd of "schools" and upstarts, who pretend to rival, or even surpass him. Sooner than a single leaf should be torn from his laurel, it were better that all which these men, and that I, as one of their set, have ever written, should

Line trunks, clothe spice, or, fluttering in a row,
Befringe the rails of Bedlam or Soho!

There are those who will believe this, and those who will not. You,
Sir, know how far I am sincere, and whether my opinion, not only in
the short work intended for publication, and in private letters which
can never be published, has or has not been the same. I look upon this
as the declining age of English poetry; no regard for others, no selfish
feeling, can prevent me from seeing this, and expressing the truth. There
can be no worse sign for the taste of the times than the depreciation of
Pope. It would be better to receive for proof Mr. Cobbett's rough but
strong attack upon Shakspeare and Milton, than to allow this smooth and
"candid" undermining of the reputation of the most perfect of our poets
and the purest of our moralists. Of his power in the passions, in de-
scription, in the mock-heroic, I leave others to descant. I take him on
his strong ground, as an ethical poet : in the former none excel; in the
mock-heroic and the ethical none equal him; and, in my mind, the latter
is the highest of all poetry, because it does that in verse, which the
greatest of men have wished to accomplish in prose. If the essence of
poetry must be a lie, throw it to the dogs, or banish it from your re-
public, as Plato would have done. He who can reconcile poetry with
truth and wisdom, is the only true "poet" in its real sense;
"the maker,
"the creator"—why must this mean the " liar," the "feigner," the
"tale-teller?" A man may make and create better things than these.

I shall not presume to say that Pope is as high a poet as Shakspeare and Milton, though his enemy, Warton, places him immediately under them. I would no more say this than I would assert in the mosque (once Saint Sophia's), that Socrates was a greater man than Mahomet. But if I say that he is very near them, it is no more than has been asserted of Burns, who is supposed.

To rival all but Shakspeare's name below.

I say nothing against this opinion. But of what "order," according to the poetical aristocracy, are Burns's poems? There are his opus magnum, "Tam O'Shanter," a tale; the "Cotter's Saturday Night," a descriptive sketch; some others in the same style; the rest are songs. So much for the rank of his productions; the rank of Burns is the very first of his art. Of Pope I have expressed my opinion elsewhere, as also

of the erect which the present attempts at poetry have had upon our literature. If any great national or natural convulsion could or should overwhelm your country in such sort as to sweep Great Britain from the kingdoms of the earth, and leave only that, after all the most living of human things, a dead language, to be studied and read, and imitated by the wise of future and far generations upon foreign shores; if your literature should become the learning of mankind, divested of party cabals, temporary fashions, and national pride and prejudice; an Englishman, anxious that the posterity of strangers should know that there had been such a thing as a British Epic and Tragedy, might wish for the preservation of Shakspeare and Milton; but the surviving world would snatch Pope from the wreck, and let the rest sink with the people. He is the moral poet of all civilization, and, as such, let us hope that he will one day be the national poet of mankind. He is the only poet that never shocks; the only poet whose faultlessness has been made his reproach. Cast your eye over his productions; consider their extent, and contemplate their variety :-pastoral, passion, mockheroic, translation, satire, ethics,—all excellent, and often perfect. If his great charm be his melody, how comes it that foreigners adore him even in their diluted translation? But I have made this letter too long. Give my compliments to Mr. Bowles.

To J. Murray, Esq.

Yours ever, very truly,

BYRON.

Post scriptum.-Long as this letter has grown, I find it necessary to append a postscript,-if possible, a short one. Mr. Bowles denies that he has accused Pope of "a sordid money-getting passion;" but he adds, "if I had ever done so, I should be glad to find any testimony that might show me he was not so." This testimony he may find, to his heart's content, in Spence and elsewhere. First, there is Martha Blount, who, Mr. Bowles charitably says, "probably thought he did not save enough for her as legatee.' Whatever she thought upon this point, her words are in Pope's favour. Then there is Alderman Barber; see Spence's Anecdotes. There is Pope's cold answer to Halifax, when he proposed a pension; his behaviour to Craggs and to Addison upon like occasions; and his own two lines

And, thanks to Homer, since I live and thrive,
Indebted to no prince or peer alive-

written when princes would have been proud to pension, and peers to promote him, and when the whole army of dunces were in array against him, and would have been but too happy to deprive him of this boast of independence. But there is something a little more serious in Mrs. Bowles's declaration, that he “would have spoken" of his "noble generosity to the outcast, Richard Savage," and other instances of a compassionate and generous heart, "had they occurred to his recollection when he wrote." What! is it come to this? Does Mr. Bowles sit down to write a minute and laboured life and edition of a great

poet? Does he anatomize his character, moral and poetical? Does he present us with his faults and with his foibles? Does he sneer at his feelings, and doubt of his sincerity? Does he unfold his vanity and duplicity? and then omit the good qualities which might, in part, have covered this multitude of sins?" and then plead that "they did not occur to his recollection?" Is this the frame of mind and of memory with which the illustrious dead are to be approached? If Mr. Bowles, who must have had access to all the means of refreshing his memory, did not recollect these facts, he is unfit for his task; but if he did recollect, and omit them, I know not what he is fit for, but I know what would be fit for him. Is the plea of "not recollecting" such prominent facts to be admitted? Mr. Bowles has been at a publie school, and, as I have been publicly educated also, I can sympathise with his predilection. When we were in the third form even, had we pleaded on the Monday morning, that we had not brought up the Saturday's exercise, because "we had forgotten it," what would have been the reply? And is an excuse, which would not be pardoned to a schoolboy, to pass current in a matter which so nearly concerns the fame of the first poet of his age, if not of his country? If Mr. Bowles so readily forgets the virtues of others, why complain so grievously that others have a better memory for his own faults? They are but the faults of an author; while the virtues he omitted from his catalogue are essential to the justice due to a man.

Mr. Bowles appears, indeed, to be susceptible beyond the privilege of authorship. There is a plaintive dedication to Mr. Gifford, in which he is made responsible for all the articles of the Quarterly. Mr. Southey, it seems, "the most able and eloquent writer in that Review," approves of Mr. Bowles's publication. Now, it seems to me the more impartial, that, notwithstanding that the great writer of the Quarterly entertains opinions opposite to the able article on Spence, nevertheless that essay was permitted to appear. Is a Review to be devoted to the opinions of any one man? Must it not vary according to circumstances, and according to the subjects to be criticised? I fear that writers must take the sweets and bitters of the public journals as they occur, and an author of so long a standing as Mr. Bowles, might have become accustomed to such incidents; he might be angry, but not astonished. I have been reviewed in the Quarterly almost as often as Mr. Bowles, and have had as pleasant things said, and some as unpleasant, as could well be pronounced. In the review of "The Fall of Jerusalem,” it is stated that I have devoted " my powers, &c. to the worst parts of manicheism," which, being interpreted, means that I worship the devil. Now I have neither written a reply, nor complained to Gifford. I believe that I observed in a letter to you, that I thought "that the critic might have praised Milman without finding it necessary to abuse me ;" but did I not add at the same time, or soon after (apropos, of the note in the book of Travels), that I would not, if it were even in my power, have a single line cancelled on my account in that nor in any other publication? Of course, I reserve to myself the privilege of response when necessary. Mr. Bowles

sems in a whimsical state about the author of the article on Spence. You know very well that I am not in your confidence, nor in that of the conductor of the journal. The moment I saw that article, I was morally certain that I knew the author "by his style." You will tell me that I do not know him that is all as it should be; keep the secret, so shall I, though no one has ever intrusted it to me. He is not the person whom Mr. Bowles denounces. Mr. Bowles's extreme sensibility reminds me of a circumstance which occurred on board of a frigate in which I was a passenger and guest of the captain's for a considerable time. The surgeon on board, a very gentlemanly young man, and remarkably able in his profession, wore a wig. Upon this ornament he was extremely tenacious. As naval jests are sometimes a little rough, his brother-officers made occasional allusions to this delicate appendage to the doctor's person. One day a young lieutenant, in the course of a facetious discussion, said, "Suppose now, doctor, I should take off your hat." Sir," replied the doctor, "I shall talk no longer with you; you grow scurrilous." He would not even admit so near an approach as to the hat which protected it. In like manner, if any body approaches Mr. Bowles's laurels, even in his outside capacity of an editor," they grow scurrilous." You say that you are about to prepare an edition of Pope; you cannot do better for your own credit as a publisher, nor for the redemption of Pope from Mr. Bowles, and of the public taste from rapid degeneracy.

66

A FRAGMENT.

June, 17, 1816.

In the year 17-, having for some time determined on a journey through countries not hitherto much frequented by travellers, I set out, accompanied by a friend whom I shall designate by the name of Augustus Darvell. He was a few years my elder, and a man of considerable fortune and ancient family-advantages which an extensive capacity prevented him alike from undervaluing or overrating. Some peculiar circumstances in his private history had rendered him to me an object of attention, of interest, and even of regard, which neither the reserve of his manners, nor occasional indications of an inquietude at times nearly approaching to alienation of mind, could extinguish.

I was yet young in life, which I had begun early; but my intimacy with him was of a recent date: we had been educated at the same schools and university, but his progress through these had preceded mine, and he had been deeply initiated into what is called the world, while I was yet in my noviciate. While thus engaged, I had heard much both of his past and present life; and, although in these accounts there were many and irreconcilable contradictions, I could still gather from the whole that he was a being of no common order, and one who, whatever pains he might take to avoid remark, would still be remarkable. I had cultivated his acquaintance subsequently, and endeavoured to obtain his friendship, but this last appeared to be unattainable; whatever affections he might have possessed seemed now, some to have been extinguished, and others to be concentred: that his feelings were acute, I had sufficient opportunities of observing; for, although he could control, he could not altogether disguise them still he had a power of giving to one passion the appearance of another, in such a manner that it was difficult to define the nature of what was working within him; and the expressions of his features would vary so rapidly, though slightly, that it was useless to trace them to their sources. It was evident that he was a prey to some cureless disquiet; but whether it arose from ambition, love, remorse, grief, from one or all of these, or merely from a morbid temperament akin to disease, I could not discover: there were circumstances alleged which might have justified the application to each of these causes; but, as I have before said, these were so contradictory and contradicted, that none could be fixed upon with accuracy. Where