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APPENDIX III.

CONTROVERSY BETWEEN BYRON AND BOWLES AS TO THE POETRY AND CHARACTER OF POPE.

(See p. 108, note 1.)

IN this Appendix are printed (1) Bowles's Invariable Principles of Poetry (1819); and (2 and 3) Byron's Two Letters [John Murray] on Bowles's Strictures on Pope. The following account of the controversy explains some of the allusions.

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The Rev. William Lisle Bowles published, in 1806, an edition of Pope's Works in ten volumes. As editor, he criticized with some severity the character of Pope both as a man and a poet. It was the criticism on Pope's morals against which Byron protested in English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers (lines 369-384)—

"Each fault, each failing scan ;

The first of poets was, alas! but man.

Rake from each ancient dunghill ev'ry pearl,
Consult Lord Fanny, and confide in Curll;

Let all the scandals of a former age

Perch on thy pen, and flutter o'er thy page," etc., etc.

Ten years later, Pope's poetical character was championed by Thomas Campbell, in his "Essay on English Poetry," prefixed to his Specimens of the British Poets (7 vols., 1819: vol. i. pp. 262-271).

Bowles replied to Campbell's "Essay" in his Invariable Principles of Poetry, in a Letter addressed to Thomas Campbell, Esq., occasioned by some Critical Observations in his "Specimens of British Poetry," particularly relating to the Poetical Character of Pope (1819). As this pamphlet

III.]

BYRON'S NAME INTRODUCED.

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gives the key to the controversy, it is here reprinted in the form in which it was published by Bowles in the third edition (1822) of his Two Letters to the Right Honourable Lord Byron, under the title of An Answer to some Observations of Thomas Campbell, Esq., in his Specimens of British Poets.

So far, except by Byron, Pope's moral character had not been defended. But the Quarterly Review for July, 1820, contained an article by Isaac Disraeli, which was nominally a review of Spence's Anecdotes of Books and Men. In this article Disraeli not only supported Campbell, and ridiculed the Invariable Principles of Poetry, but severely condemned Bowles for his attack on the moral character of Pope. Professing to quote from Bowles an "anecdote of exquisite "naïveté," Disraeli introduces Byron's name into the controversy.

Byron, in English Bards, etc., had misunderstood and misquoted Bowles's lines in The Spirit of Discovery (see Poems, vol. i. p. 325, note 1), and represents him as saying that the woods of Madeira had "trembled to a kiss." Disraeli thus quotes (p. 425) Bowles's account of his correction of Byron's mistake

"Soon after Lord Byron had published his vigorous satire called "English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers," in which, alas! pars magna fui, I met his Lordship at our common friend's house, the author of "The Pleasures of Memory," and the still more beautiful poem, "Human Life." As the rest of the company were going into another room, I said I wished to speak one word to his Lordship. He came back with much apparent courtesy. I then said to him, in a tone of seriousness, but that of perfectly good humour, 'My lord, I should not have thought of making any observations on whatever you might be pleased to give to the world as your opinion of any part of my writings; but I think if I can shew that you have done me a palpable and public wrong, by charging me with having written what I never wrote, or thought of, your own principles of justice will not allow the impression to remain.' I then spoke of a particular couplet which he had introduced into his satire

"Thy woods, Madeira, trembled with a kiss.'—Byron. And taking down the POEM, which was AT HAND, I pointed out the passage, etc."

The allusion to Byron offered him the excuse to plunge into the controversy, and to write the first and second Letter

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on the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles's Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope. Only the first of the letters was published at the time (1821). To it Bowles replied with Two Letters to the Right Honourable Lord Byron, in answer to His Lordship's Letter to on the Rev. Wm. L. Bowles's Strictures on the Life and Writings of Pope: more particularly on the question, whether POETRY be more immediately indebted to what is SUBLIME or BEAUTIFUL in the Works of NATURE, or the Works of ART (1821). With the publication of this pamphlet the controversy between Bowles and Byron ended. Byron's second Letter was not printed till 1835.

Meanwhile the war of pamphlets had grown more bitter. Bowles answered the Quarterly Review in A Reply to the Charges brought by the Reviewer of Spence's Anecdotes in the Quarterly Review for October, 1820, against the last Editor of Pope's Works. This pamphlet, written for The Pamphleteer, is dated October 25, 1820, and is published in vol. xvii. of that periodical (pp. 73-96). In the course of his reply (p. 96), Bowles attributes the Quarterly Review article to Octavius Graham Gilchrist, a grocer at Stamford, and a contributor both to the Quarterly and the London Magazine. Bowles apparently knew that Gilchrist had reviewed John Clare's Poems, descriptive of Rural Life and Scenery in the preceding number of the Quarterly (May, 1820, pp. 166-174). He also knew that Gilchrist, writing anonymously in the London Magazine for February, 1820, had already defended Pope's moral character in a review of Spence's Anecdotes, and had acknowledged the authorship in the same periodical in July, 1821. On this supposed evidence he attacks Gilchrist as the author of the Quarterly article. "When I think," he says, "of the utter defiance of "truth he has manifested, two lines from his favourite and "much-injured poet rush irresistibly into my mind :

"Honest and rough, your first son is a Squire,
The next a tradesman meek, and much a liar.'"

To this attack Gilchrist replied in a Letter to the Rev. William Lisle Bowles, in Answer to a Pamphlet recently Published under the title of "A Reply to an unsentimental

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CONTROVERSIAL AMENITIES.

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sort of Critic, the Reviewer of Spence's Anecdotes in the "Quarterly Review for October, 1820." This pamphlet, printed at Stamford, is dated December 2, 1820. In it, as in the pamphlet which it answers, the writer lays about him with a will. Bowles rejoined in Observations on the Poetical Character of Pope: further elucidating the Invariable "Principles of Poetry," etc., with a Sequel addressed to Octavius Gilchrist, Esq., F.A.S., dated February 17, 1821 (The Pamphleteer, xvii. 369–384, and xviii. 213-258). The following lines, with which Bowles concludes the first part of his rejoinder, partly quoted by Byron in his second Letter, afford a fair example of the tone in which the controversy was conducted (The Pamphleteer, vol. xvii. pp. 384, 385):

"But chiefly THEE, whose MANLY, GENEROUS mind,
So nobly-valiant, against woman-kind,
Thinks that the man of satire, unreprov'd,
Might stab the heart of Her he fondly lov'd,
And thus, malignantly as mean, apply

The ASSASSIN'S Vengeance, and the COWARD'S lye ; *

"THEE whose coarse fustian, strip'd with tinsel phrase,
Is ek'd with tawdry scraps, and tags of PLAYS;
Whose pye-bald character so aptly suit

The two extremes of BANTAM and of BRUTE; t
Compound grotesque of sullenness and show,
The chattering magpie, and the croaking crow ;

"Who, with sagacious nose, and leering eye,
Dost scent the TAINT' of distant pruriency,'
Turn every object to one loathsome shape,
Hear but a laugh,' and cry, 'a RAPE, a RAPE !'
Whose heart contends with thy Saturnian head,
A root of hemlock, and a lump of lead;
Swelling vain Folly's self-applauding horn
Shall the indignant muse hold forth to scorn.

"GILCHRIST, proceed! to other hearts impute,
The feelings that thy own foul spirit suit :

Round thy cold brain, let loathsome demons swarm,
Its native dulness into life to warm,

Then with a visage half-grimace, half-spite,

Run howling, 'Pope, Pope, Pope,'-and, howling, bite.

*See observations on Pope's detestable lines about Lady Mary. + See criticism and letter in his own name, in the London Magazine.

Reckless, thy hideous rancor I defy,

All which thy brain can brood, thy rage apply,
And thus stand forth, spite of thy venom'd foam,

To give thee BITE for BITE, or lash thee limping home."

(1) Bowles's Invariable Principles of Poetry.

"AN ANSWER TO SOME OBSERVATIONS OF THOMAS CAMPBell, ESQ., IN HIS SPECIMENS Of British Poets.

"A Letter, etc.

66 'SIR,-A short time since a friend of yours, and one of the most distinguished poets of the present day, informed me that there had appeared, in the Morning Chronicle, an extract from your Specimens of British Poets, entitled, 'CAMPBELL'S Answer to BOWLES.' I have since read, with much pleasure, the work from which the extract was taken; and I beg to return you my thanks, for the kind manner with which my name is introduced, though you profess to differ from me, and state at large the grounds of that difference, on a point of criticism. The criticism of mine, which you have discussed, is that which appears in the last volume of the last edition of Pope's Works, entitled, 'On the Poetical Character of Pope.'

"As the opinion pronounced by the editor of the Morning Chronicle will probably be the opinion of all who read, without much reflection, not my criticism, but your representation of it; I am bound, in justice to myself, to state the grounds of my proposition clearly; to meet the arguments you have brought against it, manfully but respectfully; and to make the public (at least that part of the public which may be interested in such a discussion) a judge between us !

"I feel it the more incumbent on me to do this, knowing the deserved popularity of your name, and the impression which your representation of my arguments must make on the public; though I must confess, it does appear to me that you could not have read the criticism which you discuss.

"I do not think that any thing, Sir, you have advanced, at all shakes the propositions I have laid down; and, moreover, I do not doubt I shall be able to prove that you have misconceived my meaning; ill-supported your own arguments; confounded what I had distinguished; and even given me grounds to think you had replied to propositions which you never read, or, at least, of which you could have read only the first sentence, omitting that which was integrally and essentially connected with it.

"In an article in the Edinburgh Review, the same mis-statement was made, and the same course of argument pursued. I feel, indeed, bound to thank Mr. JEFFREY, if he wrote the article, for the liberal tribute he paid to my poetry, at the expense of my canons of criticism. But in truth, from the coincidences here remarked, Í might be led to think Mr. CAMPBELL wrote the Review, were İ not more disposed to think he drew his knowledge of my criticism on POPE, not from the criticism himself, but, at second-hand, from

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