I shall not presume to say that Pope is as high a poet as Shakspeare and Milton, though his enemy, Warton, places him immediately under them.[1] I would no more say this than I would assert in the mosque (once Saint Sophia’s), that Socrates was a greater man than Mahomet.  But if I say that he is very near them, it is no more than has been asserted of Burns, who is supposed

  “To rival all but Shakspeare’s name below.”

[Footnote 1:  If the opinions cited by Mr. Bowles, of Dr. Johnson against Pope, are to be taken as decisive authority, they will also hold good against Gray, Milton, Swift, Thomson, and Dryden:  in that case what becomes of Gray’s poetical, and Milton’s moral character? even of Milton’s poetical character, or, indeed, of English poetry in general? for Johnson strips many a leaf from every laurel.  Still Johnson’s is the finest critical work extant, and can never be read without instruction and delight.]

I say nothing against this opinion.  But of what “order,” according to the poetical aristocracy, are Burns’s poems?  There are his opus magnum, “Tam O’Shanter,” a tale; the Cotter’s Saturday Night, a descriptive sketch; some others in the same style:  the rest are songs.  So much for the rank of his productions; the rank of Burns is the very first of his art.  Of Pope I have expressed my opinion elsewhere, as also of the effect which the present attempts at poetry have had upon our literature.  If any great national or natural convulsion could or should overwhelm your country in such sort, as to sweep Great Britain from the kingdoms of the earth, and leave only that, after all, the most living of human things, a dead language, to be studied and read, and imitated by the wise of future and far generations, upon foreign shores; if your literature should become the learning of mankind, divested of party cabals, temporary fashions, and national pride and prejudice; an Englishman, anxious that the posterity of strangers should know that there had been such a thing as a British Epic and Tragedy, might wish for the preservation of Shakspeare and Milton; but the surviving world would snatch Pope from the wreck, and let the rest sink with the people.  He is the moral poet of all civilisation; and as such, let us hope that he will one day be the national poet of mankind.  He is the only poet that never shocks; the only poet whose faultlessness has been made his reproach.  Cast your eye over his productions; consider their extent, and contemplate their variety:—­pastoral, passion, mock heroic, translation, satire, ethics,—­all excellent, and often perfect.  If his great charm be his melody, how comes it that foreigners adore him even in their diluted translations?  But I have made this letter too long.  Give my compliments to Mr. Bowles.

Yours ever, very truly,

BYRON.

To John Murray, Esq.