*53. Henceforth no one shall cause me to travail; witness”—witness IN ITALIC, an ominous cha for I bear on my body these fetters,(1) racter for a testimony at present).

54. To obtain Christ; and I suffer with patience these afflictions, to become worthy of the resurrection of the dead.

55. And do each of you, having received the law from the hands of the blessed Prophets and the holy gospel,(2) firmly maintain it;

56. To the end that you may be rewarded in the resurrection of the dead, and the possession of the life eternal.

57. But if any of ye, not believing, shall trespass, he shall be judged with the misdoers, and punished with those who have false belief.

58. Because such are the generation of vipers, and the children of dragons and basilisks.

59. Drive far from amongst ye, and fly from such, with the aid of our Lord Jesus Christ.

60. And the peace and grace of the beloved Son be upon you.(3) Amen.

I shall not avail myself of a "non mi ricordo,” even after so long a residence in Italy; -I do “remember the circumstance,"—and have no reluctance to relate it (since called upon so to do), as correctly as the distance of time and the impression of intervening events will permit me. In the year 1812, more than three years after the publication of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, I had the honour of meeting Mr. Bowles, in the house of our venerable host of Human Life, etc. the last Argonaut of classic English poetry, and the Nestor of our inferior race of living poets. Mr. Bowles calls this "soon after" the publication; but to me three years appear a considerable segment of the immortality of a modern poem. I recollect nothing of "the rest of the company going into another room,"-nor, though I well remember the topography of our host's elegant and classically-furnished mansion, could I swear to the very room where the conversation occurred, though the "tak

Done into English by me, January, February, 1817, at the Convent of San Lazaro, with the aid and exposition of the Armenian Text by the Fathering down the poem❞ seems to fix it in the library. Paschal Aucher, Armenian Friar.

VENICE, April 10, 1817.

BYRON.

Had it been "taking up," it would probably have been in the drawing-room. I presume also that the "remarkable circumstance" took place after dinas I conceive that neither Mr. Bowles's polite

ner;

I had also the Latin text, but it is in many places ness nor appetite would have allowed him to devery corrupt, and with great omissions.

In the different pamphlets which you have had the goodness to send me, on the Pope and Bowles's controversy, I perceive that my name is occasionally introduced by both parties. Mr. Bowles refers more than once to what he is pleased to consider "a remarkable circumstance," not only in his letter to Mr. Campbell, but in his reply to the Quarterly. The Quarterly also, and Mr. Gilchrist, have conferred on me the dangerous honour of a quotation; and Mr. Bowles indirectly makes a kind of appeal to me personally, by saying, “Lord Byron, if he remembers the circumstance, will

(1) Others finished here thus, Henceforth no one can trouble me further, for I bear in my body the sufferings of Christ. The grace our of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, my brethren. Amen.

tain "the rest of the company" standing round
their chairs in the "other room," while we were

discussing "the woods of Madeira,” instead of cir-
culating its vintage. Of Mr. Bowles's "good hu-
mour" I have a full and not ungrateful recollection;
as also of his gentlemanly manners and agreeable
conversation. I speak of the whole, and not of
particulars; for whether he did or did not use the
precise words printed in the pamphlet, I cannot
say, nor could he with accuracy. Of "the tone of
seriousness" I certainly recollect nothing: on the
contrary, I thought Mr. Bowles rather disposed to
treat the subject lightly; for he said (I have no ob-
jection to be contradicted, if incorrect), that some
of his good-natured friends had come to him and
exclaimed, "Eh! Bowles! how came you to make
the woods of Madeira ?" etc. etc. and that he had
been at some pains and pulling down of the poem
to convince them that he had never made “the
woods" do any thing of the kind. He was right,
and I was wrong, and have been wrong still up
to this acknowledgment; for I ought to have looked
twice before I wrote that which involved an inac-
curacy capable of giving pain. The fact was,
that, although I had certainly before read the Spi-
rit of Discovery, I took the quotation from the
(2) Some MSS. have, Of the holy evangelist.
(3) Others add, our Lord be with you all

review. But the mistake was mine, and not the of "noble mind," and "generous magnanimity;" review's, which quoted the passage correctly and all this because "the circumstance would have enough, I believe. I blundered-God knows how been explained had not the book been suppressed." -into attributing the tremors of the lovers to "the I see no "nobility of mind" in an act of simple juswoods of Madeira," by which they were sur-tice; and I hate the word “magnanimity," berounded. And I hereby do fully and freely de-cause I have sometimes seen it applied to the grossclare and asseverate, that the woods did not trem-est of impostors by the greatest of fools; but I ble to a kiss, and that the lovers did. I quote from

memory

---"A kiss

Stole on the listening silence, etc. etc.

would have "explained the circumstance," notwithstanding "the suppression of the book," if Mr. Bowles had expressed any desire that I should. As the "gallant Galbraith" says to "Baillie Jarvie," "Well, the devil take the mistake, and all that occasioned it." I have had as great and greater mistakes made about me personally and poetically, once a month for these last ten years, and never cared very much about correcting one or the other, at least after the first eight-and-forty hours had gone over them.

I must now, however, say a word or two about Pope, of whom you have my opinion more at large in the unpublished letter on or to (for I forget which) the editor of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine; and here I doubt that Mr. Bowles will not approve of my sentiments.

They [the lovers] trembled, even as if the power," etc. And if I had been aware that this declaration would have been in the smallest degree satisfactory to Mr. Bowles, I should not have waited nine years to make it, notwithstanding that English Bards and Scotch Reviewers had been suppressed some time previously to my meeting him at Mr. Rogers's. Our worthy host might indeed have told him as much, as it was at his representation that I suppressed it. A new edition of that lampoon was preparing for the press, when Mr. Rogers represented to me, that "I was now acquainted with many of the persons mentioned in it, and with some on terms of intimacy;" and that he knew Although I regret having published English "one family in particular to whom its suppression Bards and Scotch Reviewers, the part which I would give pleasure." I did not hesitate one mo-regret the least is that which regards Mr. Bowles ment, it was cancelled instantly; and it is no fault with reference to Pope. Whilst I was writing of mine that it has ever been republished. When that publication, in 1807 and 1808, Mr. Hobhouse I left England, in April, 1816, with no very violent was desirous that I should express our mutual opiintentions of troubling that country again, and nion of Pope, and of Mr. Bowles's edition of his amidst scenes of various kinds to distract my at-works. As i had completed my outline, and felt tention,-almost my last act, I believe, was to sign a power of attorney, to yourself, to prevent or suppress any attempts (of which several had been made in Ireland) at a republication. It is proper that I should state, that the persons with whom I was subsequently acquainted, whose names had occurred in that publication, were made my ac-house's lines, and replaced them with my own, by quaintances at their own desire, or through the which the work gained less than Mr. Bowles. 1 unsought intervention of others. I never, to the have stated this in the preface to the second edition. best of my knowledge, sought a personal introduc- It is many years since I have read that poem; but tion to any. Some of them to this day I know only the Quarterly Review, Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, and by correspondence; and with one of those it was Mr. Bowles himself, have been so obliging as to begun by myself, in consequence, however, of a refresh my memory, and that of the public. I am polite verbal communication from a third person. grieved to say, that in reading over those lines, I I have dwelt for an instant on these circum-repent of their having so far fallen short of what I stances, because it has sometimes been made a meant to express upon the subject of Bowles's edisubject of bitter reproach to me to have endea- tion of Pope's Works. Mr. Bowles says, that voured to suppress that satire. I never shrunk," Lord Byron knows he does not deserve this chaas those who know me know, from any personal racter." I know no such thing. I have met Mr. consequences which could be attached to its pub- Bowles occasionally, in the best society in London; lication. Of its subsequent suppression, as I pos- he appeared to me an amiable, well-informed, and sessed the copyright, I was the best judge and the extremely able man. I desire nothing better than sole master. The circumstances which occasioned to dine in company with such a mannered man every the suppression I have now stated; of the mo-day in the week: but of "his character" I know lives, each must judge according to his candour or nothing personally; I can only speak to his manmalignity. Mr. Bowles does me the honour to talkners, and these have my warmest approbation.

lazy, I requested that he would do so. He did it. His fourteen lines on Bowles's Pope are in the first edition of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers; and are quite as severe and much more poetical than my own in the second. On reprinting the work, as I put my name to it, I omitted Mr. Hob

But I never judge from manners, for I once had my pocket picked by the civilest gentleman I ever met with; and one of the mildest persons I ever saw was Ali Pacha. Of Mr. Bowles's "character" I will not do him the injustice to judge from the edition of Pope, if he prepared it heedlessly; nor the justice, should it be otherwise, because I would neither become a literary executioner nora personal Mr. Bowles the individual, and Mr. Bowles the editor, appear the two most opposite things imaginable.

one.

"And be himself one---antithesis." I won't say "vile," because it is harsh; nor mistaken," because it has two syllables too many: but every one must fill up the blank as he pleases. What I saw of Mr. Bowles increased my surprise and regret that he should ever have lent his talents to such a task. If he had been a fool, there would have been some excuse for him; if he had been a needy or a bad man, his conduct would have been intelligible: but he is the opposite of all these; and thinking and feeling as I do of Pope, to me the whole thing is unaccountable. However, I must call things by their right names. I cannot call his edition of Pope a❝ candid" work; and I still think

that there is an affectation of that quality not only

provided that they exist? Is Mr. Bowles aware to what such rummaging among "letters" and "sto- ! ries" might lead? I have myself seen a collection of letters of another eminent, nay, pre-eminent, deceased poet, so abominably gross, and elaborately coarse, that I do not believe that they could be paralleled in our language. What is more strange is, that some of these are couched as postcripts to his serious and sentimental letters, to which are tacked either a piece of prose, or some verses, of the most hyperbolical indecency. He himself says, that if "obscenity (using a much coarser word) be the sin against the Holy Ghost, he most certainly cannot be saved." These letters are in existence, and have been seen by many besides myself; but would his editor have been "candid” in even al

luding to them? Nothing would have even provoked me, an indifferent spectator, to allude to them, but this further attempt at the depreciation of Pope.

What should we say to an editor of Addison, who cited the following passage from Walpole's letters to George Montagu? "Dr. Young has published a new book, etc. Mr. Addison sent for him in what peace a Christian could die; unluethe young Earl of Warwick, as he was dying, to show

in those volumes, but in the pamphlets lately pub-kily he died of brandy: nothing makes a Christian

lished.

"Why, yet he doth deny his prisoners!"

die in peace like being maudling! but don't say this in Gath where you are." Suppose the editor introduced it with this preface: "One circumstance is mentioned by Horace Walpole, which, if true, was indeed flagitious. Walpole informs Montagu that Addison sent for the young Earl of Warwick, when dying, to show him in what peace a

Mr. Bowles says, that "he has seen passages in his letters to Martha Blount which were never published by me, and I hope never will be by others; which are so gross as to imply the grossest licentious ness." Is this fair play? It may, or it may not, Christian could die; but unluckily he died be that such passages exist; and that Pope, who drunk," etc. etc. Now, although there might ocwas not a monk, although a Catholic, may have cur on the subsequent, or on the same page, a faint occasionally sinned in word and deed with woman show of disbelief, seasoned with the expression of in his youth but is this a sufficient ground for the "same candour” (the same exactly as throughsuch a sweeping denunciation? Where is the un-out the book), I should say that this editor was married Englishman of a certain rank of life, who either foolish or false to his trust; such a story (provided he has not taken orders) has not to re- ought not to have been admitted, except for one proach himself between the ages of sixteen and brief mark of crushing indignation, unless it were thirty with far more licentiousness than has ever completely proved. yet been traced to Pope? Pope lived in the public that "if" is not a peace-maker. Why talk of Why the words "if true ?” eye from his youth upwards : "he had all the dunces "Cibber's testimony" to his licentiousness? to of his own time for his enemies, and, I am sorry to what does this amount? that Pope when very young say, some, who have not the apology of dulness for was once decoyed, by some noblemen and the detraction, since his death; and yet to what do all player, to a house of carnal recreation. Mr. Bowles their accumulated hints and charges amount ?-to was not always a clergyman; and when he was a an equivocal liaison with Martha Blount, which very young man, was he never seduced into as might arise as much from his infirmities as from much? If I were in the humour for story-telling, his passions; to a hopeless flirtation with Lady Mary and relating little anecdotes, I could tell a much W. Montagu; to a story of Cibber's; and to two or better story of Mr. Bowles than Cibber's, upon three coarse passages in his works. Who could much better authority, viz. that of Mr. Bowles come forth clearer from an invidious inquest on himself. It was not related by him in my prea life of fifty-six years? Why are we to be offi-sence, but in that of a third person, whom Mr. ciously reminded of such passages in his letters, 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 I, for a youthful frolic, brand Mr. Bowles with a "libertine sort of love," or with "licentiousness?" Is he the less now a pious or a good man, for not having always been a priest? No such thing; I am willing to believe him a good man, almost as good a man as Pope, but no better.

ciples of poetry." These Mr. Bowles and some of his correspondents pronounce "unanswerable;" and they are "unanswered," at least by Campbell, who seems to have been astounded by the title. The sultan of the time being offered to ally himself to a king of France because "he hated the word league;" which proves that the Padishah understood French. Mr. Campbell has no need of my alliance, nor shall I presume to offer it; but I do hate that word "invariable," What is there of human, be it poetry, philosophy, wit, wisdom,| science, power, glory, mind, matter, life, or death, which is "invariable?" Of course I put things divine out of the question. Of all arrogant baptisms of a book, this title to a pamphlet appears the most complacently conceited. It is Mr. Campbell's part to answer the contents of this performance, and especially to vindicate his own "ship," which Mr. Bowles most triumphantly proclaims to have struck to his very first fire :

The truth is, that in these days the grand "primum mobile" of England is cant; cant political, cant poetical, cant religious, cant moral; but always cant, multiplied through all the varieties of life. It is the fashion, and while it lasts will be too powerful for those who can only exist by taking the tone of the time. I say cant, because it is a thing of words, without the smallest influence upon human actions; the English being no wiser, no better, and much poorer, and more divided amongst themselves, as well as far less moral, than they were before the prevalence of this verbal decorum. This hysterical horror of poor Pope's not very well ascertained and never fully proved amours (for even Cibber owns that he prevented the somewhat peri- | It is no affair of mine, but having once begun (cerlous adventure in which Pope was embarking) | tainly not by my own wish, but called upon by the sounds very virtuous in a controversial pamphlet; frequent recurrence to my name in the pamphlets), but all men of the world who know what life is, I am like an Irishman in a "row," "any body's or at least what it was to them in their youth, must customer." I shall therefore say a word or two on laugh at such a ludicrous foundation of the charges the "ship.” of "a libertine sort of love;" while the more serious will look upon those who bring forward such charge upon an insulated fact as fanatics or hypocrites, perhaps both. The two are sometimes compounded in a happy mixture.

"Quoth he, there was a ship;
Now let me go, thou grey-hair'd loon,
Or my staff shall make thee skip."

Mr. Bowles asserts that Campbell's "ship of the line" derives all its poetry, not from "art," but from "nature." "Takeaway the waves, the winds, the sun, etc. etc. one will become a stripe of blue bunting; and the other a piece of coarse canvass on three tall poles." Very true; take away the "waves," ""the winds," and there will be no ship at all, not only for poetical, but for any other purpose; and take away "the sun," and we must read Mr. Bowles's pamphlet by candle-light. But the "poetry" of the "ship" does not depend on "the waves," etc.; on the contrary, the "ship of the

Mr. Octavius Gilchrist speaks rather irreverently of a second tumbler of hot white-wine negus." What does he mean? Is there any harm in negus? or is it the worse for being hot? or does Mr. Bowles drink negus? I had a better opinion of him. hoped that whatever wine he drank was neat; or, at least, that, like the ordinary in Jonathan Wild, "he preferr'd punch, the rather as there was no-line" confers its own poetry upon the waters, and thing against it in Scripture." I should be sorry to believe that Mr. Bowles was fond of negus; it is such a “candid" liquor, so like a wishy-washy compromise between the passion for wine and the propriety of water. But different writers have divers tastes. Judge Blackstone composed his Commentaries (he was a poet too in his youth) with a bottle of port before him. Addison's conversation was not good for much till he had taken a similar dose. Perhaps the prescription of these two great men was not inferior to the very different one of a soi-di-"calm water," and the calm water becomes a somesant poet of this day, who, after wandering amongst the hills, returns, goes to bed, and dictates his verses, being fed by a by-stander with bread and butter during the operation.

I now come to Mr. Bowles's "invariable prin

heightens theirs. I do not deny, that the" waves and winds," and above all "the sun," are highly poetical; we know it to our cost, by the many descriptions of them in verse: but if the waves bore only the foam upon their bosoms, if the winds wafted only the sea-weed to the shore, if the sun shone neither upon pyramids, nor fleets, nor førtresses, would its beams be equally poetical? 1 think not: the poetry is at least reciprocal. Take away "the ship of the line" "swinging round" the

what monotonous thing to look at, particularly if not transparently clear; witness the thousands who pass by without looking on it at all. What was it attracted the thousands to the launch? they might have seen the poetical “calm water” at Wap

ping, or in the "London Dock," or in the Pad-obliged to "cut and run" before the wind, from their unsafe anchorage, some for Tenedos, some for other isles, some for the main, and some, it might be, for eternity. The sight of these little scudding vessels, darting over the foam in the twilight, now appearing and now disappearing between the waves in the cloud of night, with their peculiarly white sails, (the Levant sails not being of |“coarse canvass,” but of white cotton), skimming along as quickly, but less safely, than the seamews which hovered over them; their evident distress, their reduction to fluttering specks in the distance, their crowded succession, their littleness, as contending with the giant element, which made our stout forty-four's teak timbers (she was built in India) creak again; their aspect and their motion, all struck me as something far more "poetical" than the mere broad, brawling, shipless sea, and the sullen winds, could possibly have been without them.

dington Canal, or in a horse-pond, or in a slop-
basin, or in any other vase. They might have heard
the poetical winds howling through the chinks of
a pigsty, or the garret window; they might have
seen the sun shining on a footman's livery, or on a
brass warming-pan; but could the "calm water,"
or the "wind," or the "sun," make all, or any of
these "poetical?" I think not. Mr. Bowles ad-
mits "the ship" to be poetical, but only from those
accessaries: now if they confer poetry so as to
make one thing poetical, they would make other
things poetical; the more so, as Mr. Bowles calls a
"ship of the line" without them,-that is to say,
itsmasts and sails and streamers,”—“blue bunt-
ing," and
coarse canvass," and "tall poles." So
they are; porcelain is clay, and man is dust, and
flesh is grass, and yet the two latter at least are the
subjects of much poesy.

Did Mr. Bowles ever gaze upon the sea? I presume that he has, at least upon a sea-piece. Did The Euxine is a noble sea to look upon, and the any painter ever paint the sea only, without the port of Constantinople the most beautiful of haraddition of a ship, boat, wreck, or some such ad-bours, and yet I cannot but think that the twenty junct? Is the sea itself a more attractive, a more moral, a more poetical object, with or without a vessel, breaking its vast but fatiguing monotony? Is a storm more poetical without a ship? or, in the poem of The Shipwreck, is it the storm or the ship which most interests? both much undoubtedly; but without the vessel, what should we care for the tempest? It would sink into mere descriptive poetry, which in itself was never esteemed a high

order of that art.

sail of the line, some of one hundred and forty guns, rendered it more "poetical" by day in the sun, and by night perhaps still more, for the Turks illuminate their vessels of war in a manner the most picturesque and yet all this is artificial. As for the Euxine, I stood upon the Symplegades I stood by the broken altar still exposed to the winds upon one of them-I felt all the "poetry” of the situation, as I repeated the first lines of Medea, but would not that "poetry" have been heightened by the Argo? It was so even by the appearance of any merchant-vessel arriving from Odessa. But Mr. Bowles says, "Why bring your ship off the stocks?" For no reason that I know except that ships are built to be launched. The water, etc. undoubtedly HEIGHTENS the poetical associations, but it does not make them; and the ship amply repays the obligation; they aid each other; the water is more poetical with the ship—the ship less so without the water. But even a ship laid up in dock is a grand and poetical sight. Even an old

I look upon myself as entitled to talk of naval matters, at least to poets-with the exception of Walter Scott, Moore, and Southey, perhaps, who have been voyagers, I have swam more miles than all the rest of them together now living ever sailed, and have lived for months and months on shipboard; and, during the whole period of my life abroad, have scarcely ever passed a month out of sight of the ocean: besides being brought up from two years till ten on the brink of it. I recollect, when anchored off Cape Sigæum in 1810, in an English frigate, a violent squall coming on at sun-boat, keel upwards, wrecked upon the barren sand, set, so violent as to make us imagine that the ship would part cable, or drive from her anchorage. Mr. Hobhouse and myself, and some officers, had been up the Dardanelles to Abydos, and were just returned in time. The aspect of a storm in the Archipelago is as poetical as need be, the sea being particularly short, dashing, and dangerous, and the navigation intricate and broken by the isles and currents. Cape Sigæum, the tumuli of the Troad," marble" or the "waste," the artificial or the Lemnos, Tenedos, all added to the associations of the time. But what seemed the most "poetical' of all at the moment, were the numbers (about two hundred) of Greek and Turkish craft, which were

is a "poetical" object (and Wordsworth, who made a poem about a washing-tub and a blind boy, may tell you so as well as I), whilst a long extent of sand and unbroken water, without the boat, would be as like dull prose as any pamphlet lately published.

What makes the poetry in the image of the "marble waste of Tadmor," or Grainger's Ode to Solitude, so much admired by Johnson? Is it the

natural object? The "waste" is like all other wastes; but the “marble" of Palmyra makes the poetry of the passage as of the place.

The beautiful but barren Hymettus, the whole