In page 14. we have a large assertion, that “the ‘Eloisa’ alone is sufficient to convict him of gross licentiousness.”  Thus, out it comes at last.  Mr. Bowles does accuse Pope of “gross licentiousness,” and grounds the charge upon a poem.  The licentiousness is a “grand peut-etre,” according to the turn of the times being.  The grossness I deny.  On the contrary, I do believe that such a subject never was, nor ever could be, treated by any poet with so much delicacy, mingled with, at the same time, such true and intense passion.  Is the “Atys” of Catullus licentious?  No, nor even gross; and yet Catullus is often a coarse writer.  The subject is nearly the same, except that Atys was the suicide of his manhood, and Abelard the victim.

The “licentiousness” of the story was not Pope’s,—­it was a fact.  All that it had of gross, he has softened;—­all that it had of indelicate, he has purified;—­all that it had of passionate, he has beautified;—­all that it had of holy, he has hallowed.  Mr. Campbell has admirably marked this in a few words (I quote from memory), in drawing the distinction between Pope and Dryden, and pointing out where Dryden was wanting “I fear,” says he, “that had the subject of ‘Eloisa’ fallen into his (Dryden’s) hands, that he would have given us but a coarse draft of her passion.”  Never was the delicacy of Pope so much shown as in this poem.  With the facts and the letters of “Eloisa” he has done what no other mind but that of the best and purest of poets could have accomplished with such materials.  Ovid, Sappho (in the Ode called hers)—­all that we have of ancient, all that we have of modern poetry, sinks into nothing compared with him in this production.

Let us hear no more of this trash about “licentiousness.”  Is not “Anacreon” taught in our schools?—­translated, praised, and edited?  Are not his Odes the amatory praises of a boy?  Is not Sappho’s Ode on a girl?  Is not this sublime and (according to Longinus) fierce love for one of her own sex?  And is not Phillips’s translation of it in the mouths of all your women?  And are the English schools or the English women the more corrupt for all this?  When you have thrown the ancients into the fire it will be time to denounce the moderns.  “Licentiousness!”—­there is more real mischief and sapping licentiousness in a single French prose novel, in a Moravian hymn, or a German comedy, than in all the actual poetry that ever was penned, or poured forth, since the rhapsodies of Orpheus.  The sentimental anatomy of Rousseau and Mad. de S. are far more formidable than any quantity of verse.  They are so, because they sap the principles, by reasoning upon the passions; whereas poetry is in itself passion, and does not systematise.  It assails, but does not argue; it may be wrong, but it does not assume pretensions to Optimism.

Mr. Bowles now has the goodness “to point out the difference between a traducer and him who sincerely states what he sincerely believes.”  He might have spared himself the trouble.  The one is a liar, who lies knowingly; the other (I speak of a scandal-monger of course) lies, charitably believing that he speaks truth, and very sorry to find himself in falsehood;—­because he