“Nor best, nor wisest, are exempt from thee;
  Folly—­Folly’s only free.”  PENROSE.

If this be the criterion of exemption, Mr. Bowles’s last two pamphlets form a better certificate of sanity than a physician’s.  Mendehlson and Bayle were at times so overcome with this depression, as to be obliged to recur to seeing “puppet-shows, and counting tiles upon the opposite houses,” to divert themselves.  Dr. Johnson at times “would have given a limb to recover his spirits.”  Mr. Bowles, who is (strange to say) fond of quoting Pope, may perhaps answer,—­

  “Go on, obliging creatures, let me see
  All which disgrac’d my betters met in me.”

But the charge, such as it is, neither disgraces them nor him.  It is easily disproved if false; and even if proved true, has nothing in it to make a man so very indignant.  Mr. Bowles himself appears to be a little ashamed of his “hasty pamphlet;” for he attempts to excuse it by the “great provocation;” that is to say, by Mr. Bowles’s supposing that Mr. Gilchrist was the writer of the article in the Quarterly, which he was not.

“But, in extenuation, not only the great provocation should be remembered, but it ought to be said, that orders were sent to the London booksellers, that the most direct personal passages should be omitted entirely,” &c.  This is what the proverb calls “breaking a head and giving a plaster;” but, in this instance, the plaster was not spread in time, and Mr. Gilchrist does not seem at present disposed to regard Mr. Bowles’s courtesies like the rust of the spear of Achilles, which had such “skill in surgery.”

But “Mr. Gilchrist has no right to object, as the reader will see.”  I am a reader, a “gentle reader,” and I see nothing of the kind.  Were I in Mr. Gilchrist’s place, I should object exceedingly to being abused; firstly, for what I did write, and, secondly, for what I did not write; merely because it is Mr. Bowles’s will and pleasure to be as angry with me for having written in the London Magazine, as for not having written in the Quarterly Review.

“Mr. Gilchrist has had ample revenge; for he has, in his answer, said so and so,” &c. &c.  There is no great revenge in all this; and I presume that nobody either seeks or wishes it.  What revenge?  Mr. Bowles calls names, and he is answered.  But Mr. Gilchrist and the Quarterly Reviewer are not poets, nor pretenders to poetry; therefore they can have no envy nor malice against Mr. Bowles:  they have no acquaintance with Mr. Bowles, and can have no personal pique; they do not cross his path of life, nor he theirs.  There is no political feud between them.  What, then, can be the motive of their discussion of his deserts as an editor?—­veneration for the genius of Pope, love for his memory, and regard for the classic glory of their country.  Why would Mr. Bowles edite?  Had he limited his honest endeavours to poetry, very little would have been said upon the subject, and nothing at all by his present antagonists.