o reproach
himself between the ages of sixteen and thirty with far more
licentiousness than has ever yet been traced to Pope? Pope lived in
the public eye from his youth upwards; he had all the dunces of his
own time for his enemies, and, I am sorry to say, some, who have not
the apology of dulness for detraction, since his death; and yet to
what do all their accumulated hints and charges amount?--to an
equivocal _liaison_ with Martha Blount, which might arise as much
from his infirmities as from his passions; to a hopeless flirtation
with Lady Mary W. Montagu; to a story of Cibber's; and to two or
three coarse passages in his works. _Who_ could come forth clearer
from an invidious inquest on a life of fifty-six years? Why are we to
be officiously reminded of such passages in his letters, provided
that they exist. Is Mr. Bowles aware to what such rummaging among
"letters" and "stories" might lead? I have myself seen a collection
of letters of another eminent, nay, pre-eminent, deceased poet, so
abominably gross, and elaborately coarse, that I do not believe that
they could be paralleled in our language. What is more strange, is,
that some of these are couched as _postscripts_ to his serious and
sentimental letters, to which are tacked either a piece of prose, or
some verses, of the most hyperbolical indecency. He himself says,
that if "obscenity (using a much coarser word) be the sin against the
Holy Ghost, he most certainly cannot be saved." These letters are in
existence, and have been seen by many besides myself; but would his
_editor_ have been "_candid_" in even alluding to them? Nothing would
have even provoked _me_, an indifferent spectator, to allude to them,
but this further attempt at the depreciation of Pope.

What should we say to an editor of Addison, who cited the following
passage from Walpole's letters to George Montagu? "Dr. Young has
published a new book, &c. Mr. Addison sent for the young Earl of
Warwick, as he was dying, to show him in what peace a Christian could
die; unluckily he died of _brandy:_ nothing makes a Christian die in
peace like being maudlin! but don't say this in Gath where you are."
Suppose the editor introduced it with this preface: "One circumstance
is mentioned by Horace Walpole, which, if true, was indeed
_flagitious_. Walpole informs Montagu that Addison sent for the young
Earl of Warwick, when dying, to show him in what peace a Christian
could die; but unluckily he died drunk,