my opinion of Cowper
_personally_, but to _show what might_ be said, with just as great an
appearance of truth and candour, as all the odium which has been
accumulated upon Pope in similar speculations. Cowper was a good man,
and lived at a fortunate time for his works.

[Footnote: One more poetical instance of the power of art, and even
its _superiority_ over nature, in poetry; and I have done:--the bust
of _Antinous_! Is there any thing in nature like this marble,
excepting the Venus? Can there be more _poetry_ gathered into
existence than in that wonderful creation of perfect beauty? But the
poetry of this bust is in no respect derived from nature, nor from
any association of moral exaltedness; for what is there in common
with moral nature, and the male minion of Adrian? The very execution
is _not natural_, but _super_-natural, or rather _super-artificial,_
for nature has never done so much.

Away, then, with this cant about nature, and "invariable principles
of poetry!" A great artist will make a block of stone as sublime as a
mountain, and a good poet can imbue a pack of cards with more poetry
than inhabits the forests of America. It is the business and the
proof of a poet to give the lie to the proverb, and sometimes to
"_make a silken purse out of a sow's ear_;" and to conclude with
another homely proverb, "a good workman will not find fault with his
tools."]

Mr. Bowles, apparently not relying entirely upon his own arguments,
has, in person or by proxy, brought forward the names of Southey and
Moore. Mr. Southey "agrees entirely with Mr. Bowles in his
_invariable_ principles of poetry." The least that Mr. Bowles can do
in return is to approve the "invariable principles of Mr. Southey." I
should have thought that the word "_invariable_" might have stuck in
Southey's throat, like Macbeth's "Amen!" I am sure it did in mine,
and I am not the least consistent of the two, at least as a voter.
Moore _(et tu, Brute!_) also approves, and a Mr. J. Scott. There is a
letter also of two lines from a gentleman in asterisks, who, it
seems, is a poet of "the highest rank:"--who _can_ this be? not my
friend, Sir Walter, surely. Campbell it can't be; Rogers it won't be.

"You have _hit the nail in_ the head, and * * * *
[Pope, I presume] _on_ the head also.

"I _remain_ yours, affectionately,
"(Five _Asterisks_.)"

And in asterisks let him remain. Whoever this person may be, he
deserves, for such a judgment of M