dge and the sole master. The
circumstances which occasioned the suppression I have now stated; of
the motives, each must judge according to his candour or malignity.
Mr. Bowles does me the honour to talk of "noble mind," and "generous
magnanimity;" and all this because "the circumstance would have been
explained had not the book been suppressed." I see no "nobility of
mind" in an act of simple justice; and I hate the word
"_magnanimity,"_ because I have sometimes seen it applied to the
grossest of impostors by the greatest of fools; but I would have
"explained the circumstance," notwithstanding "the suppression of the
book," if Mr. Bowles had expressed any desire that I should. As the
"gallant Galbraith" says to "Baillie Jarvie," "Well, the devil take
the mistake, and all that occasioned it." I have had as great and
greater mistakes made about me personally and poetically, once a
month for these last ten years, and never cared very much about
correcting one or the other, at least after the first eight and forty
hours had gone over them.

I must now, however, say a word or two about Pope, of whom you have
my opinion more at large in the unpublished letter _on_ or _to_ (for
I forget which) the editor of "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine;"--and
here I doubt that Mr. Bowles will not approve of my sentiments.

Although I regret having published "English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers," the part which I regret the least is that which regards
Mr. Bowles with reference to Pope. Whilst I was writing that
publication, in 1807 and 1808, Mr. Hobhouse was desirous that I
should express our mutual opinion of Pope, and of Mr. Bowles's
edition of his works. As I had completed my outline, and felt lazy, I
requested that _he_ would do so. He did it. His fourteen lines on
Bowles's Pope are in the first edition of "English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers;" and are quite as severe and much more poetical than my
own in the second. On reprinting the work, as I put my name to it, I
omitted Mr. Hobhouse's lines, and replaced them with my own, by which
the work gained less than Mr. Bowles. I have stated this in the
preface to the second edition. It is many years since I have read
that poem; but the Quarterly Review, Mr. Octavius Gilchrist, and Mr.
Bowles himself, have been so obliging as to refresh my memory, and
that of the public. I am grieved to say, that in reading over those
lines, I repent of their having so far fallen short of what I meant
to exp