rapidly altering, and nothing remained but to fulfil all that remained of the singular being so lately his request. With the aid of Suleiman's ataghan departed, we cut a few sods of greener turf from and my own sabre, we scooped a shallow grave upon the less withered soil around us, and laid them the spot which Darvell had indicated: the earth upon his sepulchre. easily gave way, having already received some Mahometan tenant. We dug as deeply as the time permitted us, and throwing the dry earth upon] Between astonishment and grief, I was tearless. DEAR SIR, Ravenna, February 7, 1821. ness nor appetite would have allowed him to detain "the rest of the company" standing round their IN the different pamphlets which you have had chairs in the "other room" while we were discusthe goodness to send me, on the Pope and Bowles sing "the Woods of Madeira" instead of circulating controversy, I perceive that my name is occasionally its vintage. Of Mr. Bowles's "good-humor " introduced by both parties. Mr. Bowles refers more have a full and not ungrateful recollection; as also than once to what he is pleased to consider "a of his gentlemanly manners and agreeable conremarkable circumstance," not only in his letter to versation. I speak of the whole, and not of Mr. Campbell, but in his reply to the Quarterly, particulars; for whether he did or did not use the The Quarterly also and Mr. Gilchrist have conferred precise words printed in the pamphlet, I cannot on me the dangerous honor of a quotation; and say, nor could he with accuracy. Of the tone of Mr. Bowles indirectly makes a kind of appeal to seriousness" I certainly recollect nothing on the me personally, by saying, "Lord Byron, if he contrary, I thought Mr. Bowles rather disposed to remembers the circumstance, will witness-(witness treat the subject lightly; for he said (I have no IN ITALIC, an ominous character for a testimony at objection to be contradicted if incorrect) that some present.)* of his good-natured friends had come to him and I shall not avail myself of a "non mi ricordo" exclaimed, "Eh! Bowles! how came you to make even after so long a residence in Italy;-I do "re- the Woods of Madeira," etc., etc., and that he had member the circumstance"-and have no reluctance been at some pains and pulling down of the poem to relate it (since called upon so to do) as correctly to convince them that he had never made the as the distance of time and the impression of in- Woods" do any thing of the kind. He was right, tervening events will permit me. In the year 1812, and I was wrong, and have been wrong still up to more than three years after the publication of this acknowledgment; for I ought to have looked "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," I had the twice before I wrote that which involved an inachonor of meeting Mr. Bowles in the house of our curacy capable of giving pain. The fact was, that venerable host of "Human Life, etc.," the last although I had certainly before read "the Spirit of Argonaut of classic English poetry, and the Nestor Discovery," I took the quotation from the review. of our inferior race of living poets. Mr. Bowles But the mistake was mine, and not the review's, calls this "soon after" the publication; but to me which quoted the passage correctly enough, I three years appear a considerable segment of the believe. I blundered-God knows how-into atimmortality of a modern poem. I recollect nothing tributing the tremors of the lovers to the "Woods of "the rest of the company going into another of Madeira," by which they were surrounded. And room"-nor, though I well remember the topogra- I hereby do fully and freely declare and asseverate, phy of our host's elegant and classically-furnished that the Woods did not tremble to a kiss, and that mansion, could I swear to the very room where the lovers did. I quote from memory "A kiss the conversation occurred, though the "taking. down the poem' seems to fix it in the library. Had it been "taken up," it would probably have been in the drawing-room. I presume also that the "remarkable circumstance took place after din- And if I had been aware that this declaration would ner, as I conceive that neither Mr. Bowles's polite- have been in the smallest degree satisfactory to Mr. Bowles, I should not have waited nine years to • He alludes to Majocchi, and the other Italian witnesses on the trial of make it, notwithstanding that "English Bards and the Queen. Scotch Reviewers" had been suppressed some time previously to my meeting him at Mr. Rogers's. since I have read that poem; but the Quarterly Our worthy host might indeed have told him as Review, Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, and Mr. Bowles much, as it was at his representation that I sup- himself, have been so obliging as to refresh my pressed it. A new edition of that lampoon was memory, and that of the public. I am grieved to preparing for the press, when Mr. Rogers rep- say, that in reading over those lines, I repent of resented to me, that "I was now acquainted with their having so far fallen short of what I meant to many of the persons mentioned in it, and with some express upon the subject of Bowles's edition of on terms of intimacy;" and that he knew "one Pope's Works. Mr. Bowles says that "Lord Byfamily in particular to whom its suppression would ron knows he does not deserve this character." "I give pleasure." I did not hesitate one moment; it know no such thing. I have met Mr. Bowles occawas cancelled instantly; and it is no fault of mine sionally, in the best society in London; he appeared that it has ever been republished. When I left to me an amiable, well-informed, and extremely ablEngland, in April, 1816, with no very violent inten- man. I desire nothing better than to dine in com tions of troubling that country again, and amidst pany with such a mannered man every day in the scenes of various kinds to distract my attention-week: but of "his character" I know nothing peralmost my last act, I believe, was to sign a power sonally; I can only speak of his manners, and these of attorney, to yourself, to prevent or suppress any have my warmest approbation. But I never judge attempts (of which several had been made in Ire- from manners, for I once had my pocket picked by land) at a republication. It is proper that I should the civilest gentleman I ever met with; and one of state, that the persons with whom I was subse- the mildest persons I ever saw was Ali Pacha. Of quently acquainted, whose names had occurred in Mr. Bowles's "character" I will not do him the that publication, were made my acquaintances at injustice to judge from the edition of Pope, if he their own desire, or through the unsought interven- prepared it heedlessly; nor the justice, should it be tion of others. I never, to the best of my know- otherwise, because I would neither become a literary ledge, sought a personal introduction to any. Some executioner, nor a personal one. Mr. Bowles the of them to this day I know only by correspondence; individual, and Mr. Bowles the editor, appear the and with one of those it was begun by myself, in two most opposite things imaginable. consequence, however, of a polite verbal communication from a third person. "And he himself one antithesis.” I have dwelt for an instant on these circum- I won't say "vile," because it is harsh; nor “misstances because it has sometimes been made a taken," because it has two syllables too many; but subject of bitter reproach to me to have endeavored every one must fill up the blank as he pleases. to suppress that satire. I never shrunk, as those What I saw of Mr. Bowles increased my surprise who know me know from any personal consequences and regret that he should ever have lent his talents which could be attached to its publication. Of its to such a task. If he had been a fool, there would subsequent suppression, as I possessed the copy- have been some excuse for him; if he had been a right, I was the best judge and the sole master. needy or a bad man, his conduet would have been The circumstances which occasioned the suppres- intelligible; but he is the opposite of all these; and sion I have now stated; of the motives, each must thinking and feeling as I do of Pope, to me the judge according to his candor or malignity. Mr. whole thing is unaccountable. However, I must Bowles does me the honor to talk of "noble mind," call things by their right names. I cannot call his and "generous magnanimity;" and all this because edition of Pope a "candid" work; and I still think "the circumstance would have been explained had that there is an affectation of that quality not only not the book been suppressed." I see no "nobility in those volumes, but in the pamphlets lately pub of mind" in an act of simple justice; and I hate the lished. 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 Mr. Bowles says, that "he has seen passages in circumstance," notwithstanding "the suppression his letters to Martha Blount, which were never pub of the book," if Mr. Bowles had expressed any lished by me, and I hope never will be by others; desire that I should. As the "gallant Galbraith which are so gross as to imply the grossest licen says to "Baillie Jarvie," "Well, the devil take the tiousness." Is this fair play? It may, or it may mistake and all that occasioned it." I have had as not be, that such passages exist; and that Pope, great and greater mistakes made about me per- who was not a monk, although a Catholic, may have sonally and poetically, once a month for these last occasionally sinned in word and in deed with woman ten years, and never care 1 very much about correct-in his youth; but is this a sufficient ground for such ing one or the other, a' least after the first eight- a sweeping denunciation? Where is the unmarried and-forty hours had one over them. Englishman of a certain rank of life, who (provided "Why yet he doth deny his prisoners.” I must now, however, say a word or two about he has not taken orders) has not to reproach himPope, of whom yr have my opinion more at large self between the ages of sixteen and thirty with far in the unpublished letter on or to (for I forget more licentiousness than has ever yet been traced which) the edit of "Blackwood's Edinburgh Mag- to Pope? Pope lived in the public eye from his azine;" and 'ere I doubt that Mr. Bowles will not youth upwards; he had all the dunces of his own approve of Sentiments. time for his enemies, and, I am sorry to say, some, Although regret having published "English who have not the apology of dulness for detraction, Bards and Scotch Reviewers," the part which I since his death; and yet to what do all their accuregret the east is that which regards Mr. Bowles mulated hints and charges amount;-to an equivowith reference to Pope. Whilst I was writing that cal liaison with Martha Blount, which might arise publication, in 1807 and 1808, Mr. Hobhouse was as much from his infirmities as from his passions; desir us that I should express our mutual opinion to a hopeless flirtation with Lady Mary W. Monof Tope, and of Mr. Bowles's edition of his works. tagu; to a story of Cibber's; and to two or three A I had completed my outline, and felt lazy, I re- coarse passages in his works. Who could come quested that he would do so. He did it. His four- forth clearer from an invidious inquest on a life f Geen lines on Bowles's Pope are in the first edition fifty-six years? Why are we to be officiously reof "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers;" and minded of such passages in his letters, provided are quite as severe and much more poetical than my that they exist? Is Mr. Bowles aware to what own in the second. On reprinting the work, as I such rummaging among "letters" and "stories" put my name to it, I omitted Mr. Hobhouse's lines, might lead? I have myself seen a collection of letand replaced them with my own, by which the work ters of another eminent, nay, preeminent, deceased gained less than Mr. Bowles. I have stated this in poet, so abominably gross, and elaborately coarse, the preface to the second edition. It is many years that I do not believe that they could be paralleled in our language. What is more strange, is, that sulated fact, as fanatics or hypocrites, perhaps both. some of these are couched as postscripts to his seri- The two are sometimes compounded in a happy ous and sentimental letters, to which are tacked mixture. either a piece of prose, or some verses, of the most Mr. Octavius Gilchrist speaks rather irreverently hyperbolical indecency. He himself says that if of a "second tumbler of hot white-wine negus." obscenity (using a much coarser word) be the sin What does he mean? Is there any harm in negus? against the Holy Ghost, he most certainly cannot or is it the worse for being hot? or does Mr. Bowles be saved." These letters are in existence, and have drink negus? I had a better opinion of him. I been seen by many besides myself; but would his hoped that whatever wine he drank was neat; or at editor have been "candid" in even alluding to least that, like the ordinary in Jonathan Wild, “he them? Nothing would have even provoked me, an preferred punch, the rather as there was nothing indifferent spectator, to allude to them, but this against it in Scripture." I should be sorry to befurther attempt at the depreciation of Pope. lieve that Mr. Bowles was fond of negus; it is such What should we say to an editor of Addison, who a "candid" liquor, so like a wishy-washy comprocited the following passage from Walpole's letters to mise between the passion for wine and the proprieGeorge Montagtu? "Dr. Young has published a ty of water. But different writers have divers tastes. new book, etc. Mr. Addison sent for the young Judge Biackstone composed his "Commentaries," Earl of Warwick, as he was dying, to show him in (he was a poet too in his youth,) with a bottle of what peace a Christian could die; unluckily, he died port before him. Addison's conversation was not of brandy: nothing makes a Christian die in peace good for much till he had taken a similar dose. like being maudlin! but don't say this in Gath, Perhaps the prescription of these two great men where you are." Suppose the editor introduced it was not inferior to the very different one of a soiwith this preface: "One circumstance is mentioned distant poet of this day, who, after wandering by Horace Walpole, which, if true, was indeed fla- among the hills, returns, goes to bed, and dictates gitious. Walpole informs Montagu that Addison his verses, being fed by a bystander with bread and sent for the young Earl of Warwick, when dying, butter, during the operation. to show him in what peace a Christian could die; I now come to Mr. Bowles's "invariable princibut unluckily he died drunk, etc., etc." Now, al- ples of poetry." These Mr. Bowles and some of though there might occur on the subsequent, or on his correspondents pronounce "unanswerable; " the same page, a faint show of disbelief, seasoned and they are "unanswered," at least by Campbell, with the expression of "the same candor," (the who seems to have been astounded by the title. same exactly as throughout the book,) I should say The sultan of the time being, offered to ally himself that this editor was either foolish or false to his to the king of France, because "he hated the word trust: such a story ought not to have been admit- league:" which proves that the Padishan underted, except for one brief mark of crushing indigna- stood French. Mr. Campbell has no need of my tion; unless it were completely proved. Why the alliance, nor shall I presume to offer it; but I do words "if true?" That " if" is not a peace- hate that word "invariable." What is there of maker. Why talk of "Cibber's testimony" to his human, be it poetry, philosophy, wit, wisdom, scilicentiousness? To what does this amount? that ence, power, glory, mind, matter, life or death, Pope, when very young, was once decoyed by some which is "invariable?" Of course I put things noblemen and the player to a house of carnal recre- divine out of the question. Of all arrogant baption. Mr. Bowles was not always a clergyman; tisms of a book, this title to a pamphlet appears the and when he was a very young man, was he never most complacently conceited. It is Mr. Campbell's seduced into as much? If I were in the humor for part to answer the contents of this performance, story-telling, and relating little anecdotes, I could and especially to vindicate his own "Ship," which tell a much better story of Mr. Bowles than Cib- Mr. Bowles most triumphantly proclaims to have ber's, upon much better authority, viz., that of Mr. struck to his very first fire. 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 It is no affair of mine, but having once begun, (cer I, from a youthful frolic, brand Mr. Bowles with a tainly not by my own wish, but called upon by the libertine sort of love," or with "licentiousness?" frequent recurrence to my name in the pamphlets,) is he the less now a pious or a good man for not I am like an Irishman in a "row," "any body's having always been a priest? No such thing; I am customer." I shall therefore say a word or twe on willing to believe him a good man, almost as good the "Ship." a man as Pope, but no better. "Quoth he, there was a Ship; ." Mr. Bowles asserts that Campbell's "Ship of the The truth is, that in these days the grand "pri-Line" derives all its poetry not from "art" but mum mobile" of England is cant; cant political, from "nature." "Take away the waves, the winds, cant poetical, cant religious, cant moral; but always the sun, etc., etc., one will become a stripe of cant, multiplied through all the varieties of life. It blue bunting; and the other a piece of coarse can is the fashion, and while it lasts will be too power- vas on three tall poles." Very true; take away ful for those who can only exist by taking the tone" the waves," "the winds," and there will be no of the time. I say cant, because it is a thing of ship at all, not only for poetical, but for any other words, without the smallest influence upon human purpose; and take away the sun," and we must actions, the English being no wiser, no better, and read Mr. Bowles's pamphlet by candlelight. But much poorer, and more divided among themselves, the "poetry" of the "Ship" does not depend on as well as far less moral, than they were before the "the waves," etc.; on the contrary, the "Ship of prevalence of this verbal decorum. This hysterical the Line" confers its own poetry upon the waters, horror of poor Pope's not very well ascertained, and and heightens theirs. I do not deny, that the never fully proved amours, (for even Cibber owns waves and winds," and above all "the sun," are that he prevented the somewhat perilous adventure highly poetical; we know it to our cost, by the in which Pope was embarking,) sounds very virtu- many descriptions of them in verse: but if the ɔus in a controversial pamphlet; but all men of the waves bore only the foam upon their bosoms, if the world who know what life is, or at least what it was winds wafted only the sea-weed to the shore, if the to them in their youth, must laugh at such a ludi- sun shone neither upon pyramids, nor fleets, nor erous foundation of the charge of a "libertine sort fortresses, would its beams be equally poetical? I of love; while the more serious will look upon think not: the poetry is at least reciprocal. Take those who bring forward such charges upon an in-away "the ship of the line" " 'swinging round" the "calm water," and the calm water becomes a ling, shipless sea, and the sullen winds, could possi somewhat monotonous thing to look at, particularly bly have been without them. if not transparently clear; witness the thousands The Euxine is a noble sea to look upon, and the who pass by without looking on it at all. What port of Constantinople the most beautiful of harwas it attracted the thousands to the launch? they bors, and yet I cannot but think that the twenty might have seen the poetical "calm water," at sail of the line, some of one hundred and forty guns, Wapping, or in the "London Dock," or in the rendered it more "poetical" by day in the sun, and Paddington Canal, or in a horsepond, or in a slop- by night perhaps still more, for the Turks illumibasin, or in any other vase. They might have heard nate their vessels of war in a manner the most picthe poetical winds howling through the chinks of a turesque-and yet all this is artificial. As for the pig-sty, or the garret-window; they might have Euxine, I stood upon the Symplegades-I stood by seen the sun shining on a footman's livery, or on a the broken altar still exposed to the winds upon one brass warming-pan; but could the "calm water," of them-I felt all the "poetry " of the situation, or the "wind," or the "sun," make all, or any of as I repeated the first lines of Medea; but would these, "poetical?" I think not. Mr. Bowles ad- not that "poetry" have been heightened by the mits "the ship" to be poetical, but only from those Argo? It was so even by the appearance of any accessaries: now if they confer poetry so as to make merchant vessel arriving from Odessa. But Mr. one thing poetical, they would make other things Bowles says, "why bring your ship off the stocks?" poetical; the more so, as Mr. Bowles calls a for no reason that I know, except that ships are "ship of the line" without them, that is to say, its built to be launched. The water, etc., undoubtedly "masts and sails and streamers," "blue bunting," HEIGHTENS the poetical associations, but it does and "coarse canvas," and "tall poles." So they not make them; and the ship amply repays the are; and porcelain is clay, and man is dust, and obligation: they aid cach other; the water is more flesh is grass, and yet the two latter at least are the poetical with the ship-the ship less so without the subjects of much poesy. water. But even a ship, laid up in dock, is a grand Did Mr. Bowles ever gaze upon the sea? I pre- and poetical sight. Even an old boat, keel upsume that he has, at least upon a sea-piece. Did wards, wrecked upon the barren sand, is a "poetany painter ever paint the sea only, without the ical" object, (and Wordsworth, who made a poem addition of a ship, boat, wreck, or some such ad- about a washing-tub and a blind boy, may tell you junet? Is the sea itself a more attractive, a more so as well as I;) whilst a long extent of sand and moral, a more poetical object with or without a unbroken water, without the boat, would be as like vessel, breaking its vast but fatiguing monotony? dull prose as any pamphlet lately published. Is a storm more poetical without a ship? or, in the What makes the poetry in the image of the poem of the Shipwreck, is it the storm or the ship"marble waste of Tadmor," or Grainger's "Ode to which most interests? both much, undoubtedly; Solitude," so much admired by Johnson? Is it the but without the vessel, what should we care for the "marble," or the "waste," the artificial or the natutempest? It would sink into mere descriptive ral object? The "waste" is like all other wastes ; poetry, which, in itself, was never esteemed a high but the "marble" of Palmyra makes the poetry of order of that art. the passage as of the place. I look upon myself as entitled to talk of naval The beautiful but barren Hymettus, the whole matters, at least to poets-with the exception of coast of Attica, her hills and mountains, PenteliWalter Scott, Moore, and Southey, perhaps, (who cus, Anchesmus, Philopappus, etc., etc., are in have been voyagers,) I have swum more miles than themselves poetical, and would be so if the name of all the rest of them together now living ever sailed, Athens, of Athenians, and her very ruins, were and have lived for months and months on shipboard; swept from the earth. But am I to be told that the and during the whole period of my life abroad, have "nature" of Attica would be more poetical without scarce ever passed a month out of sight of the ocean: the "art" of the Acropolis? of the Temple of Thebesides being brought up from two years till ten on seus ? and of the still all Greek and glorious monuthe brink of it. I recollect, when anchored off ments of her exquisitely artificial genius? Ask the Cape Sigæum, in 1810, in an English frigate, a vio-traveller what strikes him as most poetical, the lent squall coming on at sunset, so violent as to Parthenon, or the rock on which it stands? The make us imagine that the ship would part cable, or COLUMNS of Cape Colonna, or the Cape itself? The drive from her anchorage. Mr. Hobhouse and my-rocks, at the foot of it, or the recollection that Falself, and some officers, had been up the Dardan- coner's ship was bulged upon them? There are a elles to Abydos, and were just returned in time. thousand rocks and capes, far more picturesque The aspect of a storm in the Archipelago is as poet- than those of the Acropolis and Cape Sunium in ical as need be, the sea being particularly short, themselves; what are they to a thousand scenes in dashing, and dangerous, and the navigation intri- the wilder parts of Greece, of Asia Minor, Switzercate and broken by the isles and currents. Cape land, or even of Cintra in Portugal, or to many Sigæum, the tumuli of the Troad, Lemnos, Tene-scenes of Italy, and the Sierras of Spain? But it dos, all added to the associations of the time. But is the "art," the columns, the temples, the wrecked what seemed the most "poetical" of all at the mo-vessel, which give them their antique and their ment, were the numbers (about two hundred) of modern poetry, and not the spots themselves. Greek and Turkish craft, which were obliged to Without them, the spots of earth would be unno "cut and run" before the wind, from their unsafe ticed and unknown; buried, like Babylon and Nineanchorage, some for Tenedos, some for other isles, veh, in indistinct confusion, without poetry, as some for the main, and some it might be for eter- without existence; but to whatever spot of earth nity. The sight of these little scudding vessels, these ruins were transported, if they were capable darting over the foam in the twilight, now appear- of transportation, like the obelisk, and the sphinx, ing and now disappearing between the waves in the and the Memnon's head, there they would still excloud of night, with their peculiarly white sails (the ist in the perfection of their beauty, and in the pride Levant sails not being of "coarse canvas," but of of their poetry. I opposed, and will ever oppose, white cotton) skimming along as quickly, but less the robbery of ruins from Athens, to instruct the safely than the seamews which hovered over them; English in sculpture; but why did I so? The ruiss their evident distress, their reduction to fluttering are as poetical in Piccadilly as they were in the Parspecks in the distance, their crowded succession, thenon; but the Parthenon and its rock are less so their littleness, as contending with the giant ele- without them. Such is the poetry of art. ment, which made our stout forty-four's teak tim- Mr. Bowles contends, again, that the pyramids of bers (she was built in India) creak again; their Egypt are poetical, because of "the association aspect and their motion, all struck me as something with boundless deserts," and that a "pyramid of far more 64 poetical" than the mere broad, brawl-the same dimensions" would not be sublime in "Lincoln's Inn Fields; " not so poetical, certainly; and tearing, and kicking, and biting, and gnashing, but take away the "pyramids," and what is the foaming, grinning, and gouging, in all the poetry of "desert?" Take away Stone-henge from Salisbury martial nature, unencumbered with gross, prosaic, Plain, and it is nothing more than Hounslow Heath, artificial arms, an equal superfluity to the natural or any other unenclosed down. It appears to me warrior, and his natural poet? Is there any thing that St. Peter's, the Coliseum, the Pantheon, the unpoetical in Ulysses striking the horses of Rhesus Palatine, the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Venus di with his bow, (having forgotten his thong,) or would Medicis, the Hercules, the dying Gladiator, the Mr. Bowles have had him kick them with his foot, Moses of Michael Angelo, and all the higher works or smack them with his hand, as being more unsoof Canova, (I have already spoken of those of an- phisticated? cient Greece, still extant in that country, or trans- In Gray's Elegy, is there an image more striking ported to England,) are as poetical as Mont Blanc than his "shapeless sculpture?" Of sculpture in or Mount Etna, perhaps still more so, as they are general, it may be observed, that it is more poetical direct manifestations of mind, and presuppose poetry than nature itself, inasmuch as it represents and in their very conception; and have, moreover, as bodies forth that ideal beauty and sublimity which being such, a something of actual life, which can- is never to be found in actual nature. This at least not belong to any part of inanimate nature, unless is the general opinion; but, always excepting the we adopt the system of Spinosa, that the world is Venus di Medicis, I differ from that opinion, at least the Deity. There can be nothing more poetical in as far as regards female beauty, for the head of Lady its aspect than the city of Venice: does this depend Charlemont (when I first saw her, nine years ago) upon the sea, or the canals ? "The dirt and seaweed whence proud Venice rose !" seemed to possess all that sculpture could require for its ideal. I recollect seeing something of the same kind in the head of an Albanian girl, who was Is it the canal which runs between the palace and the actually employed in mending a road in the mounprison, or the " Bridge of Sighs" which connects tains, and in some Greek, and one or two Italian them, that render it poetical? Is it the "Canal faces. But of sublimity, I have never seen any Grande," or the Rialto which arches it, the churches thing in human nature at all to approach the exwhich tower over it, the palaces which line, and the pression of sculpture, either in the Apollo, the gondolas which glide over the waters, that render Moses, or other of the sterner works of ancient or this city more poetical than Rome itself? Mr. modern art. Bowles will say, perhaps, that the Rialto is but Let us examine a little further this "babble of marble, the palaces and churches only stone, and green fields," and of bare nature in general, as su the gondolas a "coarse" black cloth, thrown over perior to artificial imagery, for the poetical purposes some planks of carved wood, with a shining bit of of the fine arts. In landscape painting, the great fantastically-formed iron at the prow, "without" artist does not give you a literal copy of a country, the water. And I tell him that without these the but he invents and composes one. Nature, in her water would be nothing but a clay-colored ditch, actual aspect, does not furnish him with such existand whoever says the contrary, deserves to be at the ing scenes as he requires. Even where he presents bottom of that where Pope's heroes are embraced you with some famous city, or celebrated scene from by the mud nymphs. There would be nothing to mountain or other nature it must be taken from make the canal of Venice more poetical than that some particular point of view, and with such light, of Paddington, were it not for the artificial adjuncts and shade, and distance, etc., as serve not only to above mentioned, although it is a perfectly natural heighten its beauties, but to shadow its deformities. canal, formed by the sea, and the innumerable The poetry of nature alone, exactly as she appears, islands which constitute the site of this extraordi-is not sufficient to bear him out. The very sky of nary 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. his painting is not the portrait of the sky of nature; it is a composition of different skies, observed at different times, and not the whole copied from any particular 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. 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." Ask a portrait painter to describe his agonies in Mr. B wles contends, that all his great power, even accommodating the faces with which Nature and in this, depends upon their connexion with nature. his sitters have crowded his painting-room to the The "shield of Achilles derives its poetical interest principles of his art; with the exception of perhaps from the subjects described on it." And from what ten faces in as many millions, there is not one which does the spear of Achilles derive its interest? and he can venture to give without shading much and the helmet and the mail worn by Patroclus, and the adding more. Nature, exactly, simply, barely nacelestial armor, and the very brazen greaves of the ture, will make no great artist of any kind, and least well-booted Greeks? Is it solely from the legs, and of all a poet-the most artificial, perhaps, of all the back, and the breast, and the human body, artists in his very essence. With regard to natural which they enclose? In that case, it would have imagery, the poets are obliged to take some of their been more poetical to have made them fight naked; best illustrations from art. say and Gully and Gregson, as being nearer to a state tain is as clear or clearer than glass," to express its of nature, are more poetical, boxing in a pair of beautydrawers, than Hector and Achilles in radiant armor, and with heroic weapons. You "O fons Bandusise, splendidior vitro !" that "a foun Instead of the clash of helmets, and the rushing is displayed, but so also is his mantle In the speech of Mark Antony, the body of Cæsar of chariots, and the whizzing of spears, and the glancing of swords, and the cleaving of shields, and the piercing of breastplates, why not represent the Greeks and Trojans like two savage tribes, tugging' "You all do know this mantle," etc, "Look! in this place ran Cassius' dagger through |