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,” &c.; on the contrary, the “Ship of the Line” confers its own poetry upon the waters, and 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 fortresses, would its beams be equally poetical?  I think not:  the poetry is at least reciprocal.  Take away “the Ship of the line” “swinging round” the “calm water,” and the calm water becomes a somewhat 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 Wapping, or in the “London Dock,” or in the Paddington 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 admits “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, its “masts and sails and streamers,”—­“blue bunting,” and “coarse canvass,” and “tall poles.”  So they are; and 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 any painter ever paint the sea only, without the addition of a ship, boat, wreck, or some such adjunct?  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.