Mr. Bowles appears, indeed, to be susceptible beyond the privilege of authorship.  There is a plaintive dedication to Mr. Gifford, in which he is made responsible for all the articles of the Quarterly.  Mr. Southey, it seems, “the most able and eloquent writer in that Review,” approves of Mr. Bowles’s publication.  Now it seems to me the more impartial, that notwithstanding that “the great writer of the Quarterly” entertains opinions opposite to the able article on Spence, nevertheless that essay was permitted to appear.  Is a review to be devoted to the opinions of any one man?

Must it not vary according to circumstances, and according to the subjects to be criticised?  I fear that writers must take the sweets and bitters of the public journals as they occur, and an author of so long a standing as Mr. Bowles might have become accustomed to such incidents; he might be angry, but not astonished.  I have been reviewed in the Quarterly almost as often as Mr. Bowles, and have had as pleasant things said, and some as unpleasant, as could well be pronounced.  In the review of “The Fall of Jerusalem” it is stated, that I have devoted “my powers, &c. to the worst parts of Manicheism;” which, being interpreted, means that I worship the devil.  Now, I have neither written a reply, nor complained to Gifford.  I believe that I observed in a letter to you, that I thought “that the critic might have praised Milman without finding it necessary to abuse me;” but did I not add at the same time, or soon after, (a propos, of the note in the book of Travels,) that I would not, if it were even in my power, have a single line cancelled on my account in that nor in any other publication?  Of course, I reserve to myself the privilege of response when necessary.  Mr. Bowles seems in a whimsical state about the author of the article on Spence.  You know very well that I am not in your confidence, nor in that of the conductor of the journal.  The moment I saw that article, I was morally certain that I knew the author “by his style.”  You will tell me that I do not know him:  that is all as it should be; keep the secret, so shall I, though no one has ever intrusted it to me.  He is not the person whom Mr. Bowles denounces.  Mr. Bowles’s extreme sensibility reminds me of a circumstance which occurred on board of a frigate in which I was a passenger and guest of the captain’s for a considerable time.  The surgeon on board, a very gentlemanly young man, and remarkably able in his profession, wore a wig.  Upon this ornament he was extremely tenacious.  As naval jests are sometimes a little rough, his brother officers made occasional allusions to this delicate appendage to the doctor’s person.  One day a young lieutenant, in the course of a facetious discussion, said, “Suppose now, doctor, I should take off your hat,”—­“Sir,” replied the doctor, “I shall talk no longer with you; you grow scurrilous.”  He would not even admit so near an approach as to the hat which protected it.  In like manner, if any body approaches Mr. Bowles’s laurels, even in his outside capacity of an editor, “they grow scurrilous.”  You say that you are about to prepare an edition of Pope; you cannot do better for your own credit as a publisher, nor for the redemption of Pope from Mr. Bowles, and of the public taste from rapid degeneracy.