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In reference to some complaints made by Mr. Bowles, in his Pamphlet, of a charge of “hypochondriacism” which he supposed to have been brought against him by his assailant, Mr. Gilchrist, the noble writer thus proceeds:—­

“I cannot conceive a man in perfect health being much affected by such a charge, because his complexion and conduct must amply refute it.  But were it true, to what does it amount?—­to an impeachment of a liver complaint.  ‘I will tell it to the world,’ exclaimed the learned Smelfungus:  ’you had better (said I) tell it to your physician.  ’There is nothing dishonourable in such a disorder, which is more peculiarly the malady of students.  It has been the complaint of the good and the wise and the witty, and even of the gay.  Regnard, the author of the last French comedy after Moliere, was atrabilarious, and Moliere himself saturnine.  Dr. Johnson, Gray, and Burns, were all more or less affected by it occasionally.  It was the prelude to the more awful malady of Collins, Cowper, Swift, and Smart; but it by no means follows that a partial affliction of this disorder is to terminate like theirs.  But even were it so,

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

“Mendelsohn 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.’

“In page 14. we have a large assertion, that ’the Eloisa alone is sufficient to convict him (Pope) of gross licentiousness.’  Thus, out it comes at last—­Mr. B. 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.