ing of mankind, divested of party cabals, temporary
fashions, and national pride and prejudice; an Englishman, anxious
that the posterity of strangers should know that there had been such
a thing as a British Epic and Tragedy, might wish for the
preservation of Shakspeare and Milton; but the surviving world would
snatch Pope from the wreck, and let the rest sink with the people. He
is the moral poet of all civilisation; and as such, let us hope that
he will one day be the national poet of mankind. He is the only poet
that never shocks; the only poet whose _faultlessness_ has been made
his reproach. Cast your eye over his productions; consider their
extent, and contemplate their variety:--pastoral, passion, mock
heroic, translation, satire, ethics,--all excellent, and often
perfect. If his great charm be his _melody_, how comes it that
foreigners adore him even in their diluted translations? But I have
made this letter too long. Give my compliments to Mr. Bowles.

Yours ever, very truly,

BYRON.

_To John Murray, Esq_.

_Post Scriptum_.--Long as this letter has grown, I find it necessary
to append a postscript; if possible, a short one. Mr. Bowles denies
that he has accused Pope of "a sordid money-getting passion;" but, he
adds, "if I had ever done so, I should be glad to find any testimony
that, might show he was _not_ so." This testimony he may find to his
heart's content in Spence and elsewhere. First, there is Martha
Blount, who, Mr. Bowles charitably says, "probably thought he did not
save enough for her, as legatee." Whatever she _thought_ upon this
point, her words are in Pope's favour. Then there is Alderman Barber;
see Spence's Anecdotes. There is Pope's cold answer to Halifax when
he proposed a pension; his behaviour to Craggs and to Addison upon
like occasions, and his own two lines--

"And, thanks to Homer, since I live and thrive,
Indebted to no prince or peer alive;"

written when princes would have been proud to pension, and peers to
promote him, and when the whole army of dunces were in array against
him, and would have been but too happy to deprive him of this boast
of independence. But there is something a little more serious in Mr.
Bowles's declaration, that he "_would_ have spoken" of his "noble
generosity to the outcast Richard Savage," and other instances of a
compassionate and generous heart, "_had they occurred to his
recollection when he wrote_." What! is it come to this? Does Mr.
Bo