minster Abbey, or Saint Paul's into a powder
magazine, their poetry, as objects, remains the same; the Parthenon
was actually converted into one by the Turks, during Morosini's
Venetian siege, and part of it destroyed in consequence. Cromwell's
dragoons stalled their steeds in Worcester cathedral; was it less
poetical as an object than before? Ask a foreigner on his approach to
London, what strikes him as the most poetical of the towers before
him: he will point out Saint Paul's and Westminster Abbey, without,
perhaps, knowing the names or associations of either, and pass over
the "tower for patent shot,"--not that, for any thing he knows to the
contrary, it might not be the mausoleum of a monarch, or a Waterloo
column, or a Trafalgar monument, but because its architecture is
obviously inferior.

To the question, "Whether the description of a game of cards be as
poetical, supposing the execution of the artists equal, as a
description of a walk in a forest?" it may be answered, that the
_materials_ are certainly not equal; but that "the _artist_," who has
rendered the "game of cards poetical," is _by far the greater_ of the
two. But all this "ordering" of poets is purely arbitrary on the part
of Mr. Bowles. There may or may not be, in fact, different "orders"
of poetry, but the poet is always ranked according to his execution,
and not according to his branch of the art.

Tragedy is one of the highest presumed orders. Hughes has written a
tragedy, and a very successful one; Fenton another; and Pope none.
Did any man, however,--will even Mr. Bowles himself,--rank Hughes and
Fenton as poets above _Pope_? Was even Addison (the author of Cato),
or Rowe (one of the higher order of dramatists as far as success
goes), or Young, or even Otway and Southerne, ever raised for a
moment to the same rank with Pope in the estimation of the reader or
the critic, before his death or since? If Mr. Bowles will contend for
classifications of this kind, let him recollect that descriptive
poetry has been ranked as among the lowest branches of the art, and
description as a mere ornament, but which should never form the
"subject" of a poem. The Italians, with the most poetical language,
and the most fastidious taste in Europe, possess now five _great_
poets, they say, Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, Tasso, and, lastly,
Alfieri[1]; and whom do they esteem one of the highest of these, and
some of them the very highest? Petrarch the _sonneteer_: it is