Mr. Bowles declares, that “he will not enter into a particular examination of the pamphlet,” which by a misnomer is called “Gilchrist’s Answer to Bowles,” when it should have been called “Gilchrist’s Abuse of Bowles.”  On this error in the baptism of Mr. Gilchrist’s pamphlet, it may be observed, that an answer may be abusive and yet no less an answer, though indisputably a temperate one might be the better of the two:  but if abuse is to cancel all pretensions to reply, what becomes of Mr. Bowles’s answers to Mr. Gilchrist?

Mr. Bowles continues:—­“But as Mr. Gilchrist derides my peculiar sensitiveness to criticism, before I show how destitute of truth is this representation, I will here explicitly declare the only grounds,” &c. &c. &c.—­Mr. Bowles’s sensibility in denying his “sensitiveness to criticism” proves, perhaps, too much.  But if he has been so charged, and truly—­what then?  There is no moral turpitude in such acuteness of feeling:  it has been, and may be, combined with many good and great qualities.  Is Mr. Bowles a poet, or is he not?  If he be, he must, from his very essence, be sensitive to criticism; and even if he be not, he need not be ashamed of the common repugnance to being attacked.  All that is to be wished is, that he had considered how disagreeable a thing it is, before he assailed the greatest moral poet of any age, or in any language.

Pope himself “sleeps well,”—­nothing can touch him further; but those who love the honour of their country, the perfection of her literature, the glory of her language—­are not to be expected to permit an atom of his dust to be stirred in his tomb, or a leaf to be stripped from the laurel which grows over it.

Mr. Bowles assigns several reasons why and when “an author is justified in appealing to every upright and honourable mind in the kingdom.”  If Mr. Bowles limits the perusal of his defence to the “upright and honourable” only, I greatly fear that it will not be extensively circulated.  I should rather hope that some of the downright and dishonest will read and be converted, or convicted.  But the whole of his reasoning is here superfluous—­“an author is justified in appealing,” &c. when and why he pleases.  Let him make out a tolerable case, and few of his readers will quarrel with his motives.

Mr. Bowles “will now plainly set before the literary public all the circumstances which have led to his name and Mr. Gilchrist’s being brought together,” &c.  Courtesy requires, in speaking of others and ourselves, that we should place the name of the former first—­and not “Ego et Rex meus.”  Mr. Bowles should have written “Mr. Gilchrist’s name and his.”