Now let me go, thou grey-haired loon,
Or my staff shall make thee skip."

It is no affair of mine, but having once begun, (certainly not by my
own wish, but called upon by the frequent recurrence to my name in
the pamphlets,) I am like an Irishman in a "row," "any body's
customer." I shall therefore say a word or two on the "Ship."

Mr. Bowles asserts that Campbell's "Ship of the Line" derives all its
poetry, not from "_art_," but from "_nature_." "Take away the waves,
the winds, the sun, &c. &c. _one_ will become a stripe of blue
bunting; and the other a piece of coarse canvass on three tall
poles." Very true; take away the "waves," "the winds," and there will
be no ship at all, not only for poetical, but for any other purpose;
and take away "the sun," and we must read Mr. Bowles's pamphlet by
candle-light. But the "poetry" of the "Ship" does _not_ depend on
"the waves," &c.; on the contrary, the "Ship of the Line" confers its
own poetry upon the waters, and heightens _theirs._ I do not deny,
that the "waves and winds," and above all "the sun," are highly
poetical; we know it to our cost, by the many descriptions of them in
verse: but if the waves bore only the foam upon their bosoms, if the
winds wafted only the sea-weed to the shore, if the sun shone neither
upon pyramids, nor fleets, nor fortresses, would its beams be equally
poetical? I think not: the poetry is at least reciprocal. Take away
"the Ship of the line" "swinging round" the "calm water," and the
calm water becomes a somewhat monotonous thing to look at,
particularly if not transparently _clear_; witness the thousands who
pass by without looking on it at all. What was it attracted the
thousands to the launch? they might have seen the poetical "calm
water" at Wapping, or in the "London Dock," or in the Paddington
Canal, or in a horse-pond, or in a slop-basin, or in any other vase.
They might have heard the poetical winds howling through the chinks
of a pigsty, or the garret window; they might have seen the sun
shining on a footman's livery, or on a brass warming pan; but could
the "calm water," or the "wind," or the "sun," make all, or any of
these "poetical?" I think not. Mr. Bowles admits "the Ship" to be
poetical, but only from those accessaries: now if they _confer_
poetry so as to make one thing poetical, they would make other things
poetical; the more so, as Mr. Bowles calls a "ship of the line"
without them,--that is to say, its "masts and sail