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remarks are republished in the letter to Campbell; and here is a man, who has read those remarks, and having first perverted my obvious meaning, tells me I charge Pope with "taking a bribe to suppress a satire, and then publishing it.'

Here then, again, I must quote my own words:

"A story so base ought not for a moment to be admitted, solely on the testimony of Walpole; till there is other proof, besides the assertion of Walpole, the same candour which made us REJECT what, upon no better foundation, was said of Addison, ought to make us reject, with equal readiness, the belief of a circumstance SO DEROGATORY to the character of Pope!

"Whatever can be proved ought not to be rejected; whatever (charge) has no other foundation than the ipse dixit' of an adversary is entitled to NO REGARD."-Note on Pope.

Let me now ask, how could any one, with the honorable feelings of an honest heart, keep in the dark, purposely, this testimony in Pope's favor: I say purposely, for the book was before him, out of which,

"With all th’invidious malice of a shrew,"-(COWPER.)

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he has picked every thing that he thought would make me appear prejudiced, and studiously omitted whatever was contrary to his own unjust and exasperated prejudice? How could any one, I repeat, without feelings of "deep, deep" shame without being lost and dead to every sense of candid or generous feelings-hold up and emblazon to the broad day, with colors furnished from his own distempering and distorting "spleen," every thing a sacred regard to truth made me say, which might appear derogatory to Pope's amiable character, and yet shut his eyes, on purpose, to those passages where I have denied the charges brought unjustly against him, or spoken of his virtues? I should indeed have BLUSHED"" to have acted in this manner.

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The distich on Sappho, which this very writer calls too "indelicate to transcribe," I leave for him to reconcile to Pope's purity, which I have "aspersed;" and observe, reader, because I had spoken of his unmanly conduct to a lady whom he once idolised, how this same writer descants!

"Mr. Bowles has unsparingly attacked Pope, on the score of his quarrel with Lady Mary." Mr. Bowles spoke with indignation, and ever will, of this cowardly attack, in lines which this purist “cannot transcribe," against Sappho; and I say that Pope knew the couplet was universally applied to Lady Mary, and to her alone. Pope received from Lord Peterborough the most pressing remonstrance, as from a friend and gallant Cavalier, not to let the disgraceful couplet remain; and this fact alone, in opposition to

all advanced by the Reviewer, is sufficient in the eyes of conimon sense, to fix the application of the couplet, not on the first Sappho, "Mrs. Thomas," for she was DEAD! and beyond the reach of satire; but on the living, the accomplished Sappho, who had rejected Pope's preposterous addresses.

And here I assert," unwarrantably " unwarrantably" as I may have "attacked" Pope, for his conduct to Lady Mary, I have said nothing against him half so depreciating as this critic's own representation:"In his letters to her Ladyship, the stages of his erotic fever may be noted by the statements of the patient himself; perhaps it was at its height, when, speaking of the congeniality of their minds,' the tormented poet put his case to her hypothetically, if she can overlook a wretched body!'

"We conjecture this was the precise moment when a rude burst of laughter awoke him from the PARADISE OF FOOLS." As I had no doubt of the fact thus stated, I have shown this was my opinion; but I have not touched on it in a manner half so disparaging to Pope!

And now we enter on the famous quarrel with Addison.

When we look with regret on the numerous "macula" on Pope's page, who can avoid repeating,

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-Excuse some courtly stains,

"No whiter page than Addison's remains."

When we turn to his works, when we remember the virtuous impression generally excited by his name, and find his character in accordance with his page; when we remember he filled a high post in public life, and yet, was venerated and beloved by those who were publicly opposed to him; when his generous conduct to Swift, in Ireland, is remembered, the silence of political adversaries, and the warmth of so many endeared friends; and whilst glowing with these feelings, when we are carried to his death-bed, in that mansion, now inhabited by an accomplished, amiable, classical nobleman, and repeat with Tickel,

"He taught us HOW TO LIVE; and oh, how high
"The price of knowledge, TAUGHT US HOW TO DIE.

"

With these feelings some predilection may be allowed to the recollection of the pure, and kind, and accomplished, and Christian, ATTICUS.

Now, as I have said, the best way to estimate the character of those, whose tale of days is ended, would be to compare what is said of them by friend or foe! But it really appears to me, that the mode in which departed worth is estimated by this writer, is to take for granted what is said by enemies, against those we wish to

depress, and listen to the idolising plaudits only, of the most partial friends of those we choose to exalt.

Thus the man takes a few sayings of those who were the least friendly, and says, "How like is Pope's character of Atticus!" Pope's verses to Addison, on Medals, with the elegant adulation of his friend Craggs, may be brought as a proof of his disinterested praise. But it must, at the same time, be remembered, how warmly does Addison in the Spectator speak of Pope's early productions. He was, moreover, eminent in the political as well as the literary world. In such a situation, and with such a character, to whom would a young man offer sooner, the elegant testimony of classical encomium? But in speaking of Pope's meeting, after the quarrel with Addison, I set plainly before the reader the account which is left us. And this account, I repeat, is not left by Addison, or any of his friends, but by the admirer and idolizer of Pope.

I say, again, let any unbiassed man, read only the account of this memorable meeting, by Pope's partial friend, and then declare whether he thinks I ought to be condemned, for judging according to that very document, which Pope's own friend furnished, and on which my opinion was founded.

Surely I have the same right to express my opinion as this writer has to express his. I have added nothing; I bave concealed nothing. He has done both: he has added exaggerations, and he has wilfully concealed what suited his purpose to conceal; and when he charges me with SURMISING AWAY EVERY AMIABLE CHARACTERISTIC" of Pope, I charge him, and I think he stands convicted of wilfully aggravating every charge against me.

I will now candidly lay before the public, to whom I am forced to make this appeal, the real reason of that exclamation, which has excited such a tone of sarcastic reproof, when this critic says " Listen to Mr. Bowles-a sort of sentimental critic!" I tremble for every character when I hear any thing of Spence's Anecdotes."" Now listen to Mr. BOWLES AGAIN, and he will ingenuously tell this "unsentimental sort of a critic what moved him to make this exclamation.

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In looking over Addison's and Pope's Lives, whenever any anecdotes, particularly detractive, were told of characters we have been in habits of esteeming, on looking to the foot of the page, I invariably found" SPENCE! SPENCE! SPENCE!"

Addison, in consonancy with his character, "engaged," says Johnson, "in a nobler work-a Defence of the Christian Religion."

This, and another pious composition, Pope imputed to a SELFISH MOTIVE! He says he believed this, "on the credit of Ton

son," who having quarrelled with Addison, said, “he intended to TAKE ORDERS and OBTAIN A BISHOPRICK; and this was the reason of Addison's writing "in Defence of the CHRISTIAN RELIGION! for Tonson always believed him a PRIEST IN HIS HEART!" Look at the bottom of the page and you see-SPENCE! "Prior is only fit to make verses."-SPENCE!

"The woman with whom he cohabited was a despicable drab of the lowest species."-SPENCE!

Phillips," says Pope, "seemed to have been encouraged to abuse me, in coffee-houses and conversations."-SPENCE!

"Addison and Steele, to echo him, used to DEPRECIATE DRYDEN." SPENCE!

"When Gay, by request, attended Addison on his death-bed, Addison told him he HAD INJURED HIM! He did not explain what the injury was; but Gay supposed that some preferment, intended for him, was, by ADDISON'S INTERVENTION, withheld!"-SPENCE!

The story of Addison's ungenerous treatment of Steele, is not told in Spence, but, in a late edition, is traced to Pope; and I know no other authority for it

It was told to Johnson by a person whose name is not givento this nameless person it was told by Lady Primrose; Steele told it to her with tears in his eyes; it was confirmed to the anonymous author of a note in Johnson's Lives, by Dr. Stenton, who said he had it from Hooke, who had it-FROM POPE.

Had I been disposed to attack Pope, as I am described, “a l'outrance," I think I could have brought more proofs than I have done, of something that looks more like disingenuous carping at Addison's fame, than appears from Addison towards him. I am sure, if I had sat down, not with a sacred regard to truth, but on purpose to aggravate his faults, and to "surmise away "every amiable quality," I could not have been more abused, by those whose rancour can be only accounted for by supposing they share all Pope's unamiable qualities, without his virtues or his genius.

I have thought it necessary to say so much, to show the nature of my feelings when 1 hastily spoke of Spence's Anecdotes, and the critic is welcome to his splenetic jocularity. Having declared I did not believe the charge against Pope, which was indeed "infamous, if true," I may, I hope, be allowed to say, I do not believe one syllable of all that is charged against Addison or Prior, the authority being only one, and, in the case of Addison, that of an enemy; but Spence's Anecdotes, where these and other accusations are heaped against eminent men, seen, as they were, without any accompanying or enlivening circumstances, such as now appear, when the amusing gossip is read as a whole,

induced me to speak with unguarded warmth. I hope this is not a crime.

Ignoscenda quidem, scirent si ignoscere CRITICS.

On the occasion when I used the expression-" the heart is sick," &c. (which seems to have an effect upon this gentleman like that of the words of Cato upon John Dennis, in Pope's disingenuous account of his poisoning,) I trust the reader will remember, that the passage which excited this expression, though it was not in Spence, as now appears to be the case, was quoted as coming from the same store-house of gossip, which contained similar reflections on various other characters. He will remember I had not seen Spence's Anecdotes, and could not have seen them; and I could only write from the authority before me; and if Hughes, of whom Pope had spoken so cordially and kindly before, was stated in the same book, to have shared the common obloquy with others equally respectable, and that the language of such disrespect came from Pope himself, wearied with seeing, and seeing nothing else than these contradictions, and all given under the authority of Spence, I might naturally enough exclaim" Neither friend or foe are spared!"

I rejoice to find I was mistaken; and having now read Spence's Anecdotes entire, that which seemed so revolting when all the little scandal was, if I may say, compounded in the unfavourable extracts, and no "relief" (does he understand this word?) of lively and good-natured anecdote afforded, such as now appears when the book is taken all together, I confess ingenuously the hasty warmth with which I spoke.

He has made the most of it, and so let him. Having spoken of Spence, perhaps I may give a momentary "relief" to the irksomeness of self-defence, by mentioning a few circumstances relating to him, which even this writer may not know. He says, very justly, that there was a "moral loveliness in the character and life of Spence." The Bishop of London (Louth), the Rev. Mr. Rolle, rector of Berwick, Wilts, near Shaftesbury, Ridley, the author of the Tales of the Genii, and a relation, of whom I have spoken in the Vindicia Wykehamicæ, were all school-fellows at Winchester together, and kept up the most friendly intercourse as long as they lived. The Rev. Wm. Bowles, the rector of Lower Donhead, lived within three miles of Rolle, who had a college-living, now in the possession of the Rev. P. Bingham. The mild countenance, and encouraging, playful, but gentle manners of Rolle, I yet remember, having often seen him when a child at my father's house. Spence, the critic observes, is described in the Tales of the Genii as "the Dervise of the Groves," Perhaps he might not be aware, that

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