in their youth, must laugh at such a ludicrous foundation of the
charge of "a libertine sort of love;" while the more serious will
look upon those who bring forward such charges upon an insulated fact
as fanatics or hypocrites, perhaps both. The two are sometimes
compounded in a happy mixture.

Mr. Octavius Gilchrist speaks rather irreverently of a "second
tumbler of _hot_ white-wine negus." What does he mean? Is there any
harm in negus? or is it the worse for being _hot_? or does Mr. Bowles
drink negus? I had a better opinion of him. I hoped that whatever
wine he drank was neat; or, at least, that, like the ordinary in
Jonathan Wild, "he preferred _punch,_ the rather as there was nothing
against it in Scripture." I should be sorry to believe that Mr.
Bowles was fond of negus; it is such a "candid" liquor, so like a
wishy-washy compromise between the passion for wine and the propriety
of water. But different writers have divers tastes. Judge Blackstone
composed his "Commentaries" (he was a poet too in his youth) with a
bottle of port before him. Addison's conversation was not good for
much till he had taken a similar dose. Perhaps the prescription of
these two great men was not inferior to the very different one of a
soi-disant poet of this day, who, after wandering amongst the hills,
returns, goes to bed, and dictates his verses, being fed by a
by-stander with bread and butter during the operation.

I now come to Mr. Bowles's "invariable principles of poetry." These
Mr. Bowles and some of his correspondents pronounce "unanswerable;"
and they are "unanswered," at least by Campbell, who seems to have
been astounded by the title. The sultan of the time being offered to
ally himself to a king of France because "he hated the word league;"
which proves that the Padishan understood French. Mr. Campbell has no
need of my alliance, nor shall I presume to offer it; but I do hate
that word "_invariable_." What is there of _human_, be it poetry,
philosophy, wit, wisdom, science, power, glory, mind, matter, life,
or death, which is "_invariable_?" Of course I put things divine out
of the question. Of all arrogant baptisms of a book, this title to a
pamphlet appears the most complacently conceited. It is Mr.
Campbell's part to answer the contents of this performance, and
especially to vindicate his own "Ship," which Mr. Bowles most
triumphantly proclaims to have struck to his very first fire.

"Quoth he, there was a _Ship;_