wles sit down to write a minute and laboured life and edition of a
great poet? Does he anatomise his character, moral and poetical? Does
he present us with his faults and with his foibles? Does he sneer at
his feelings, and doubt of his sincerity? Does he unfold his vanity
and duplicity? and then omit the good qualities which might, in part,
have "covered this multitude of sins?" and then plead that "_they did
not occur to his recollection_?" Is this the frame of mind and of
memory with which the illustrious dead are to be approached? If Mr.
Bowles, who must have had access to all the means of refreshing his
memory, did not recollect these facts, he is unfit for his task; but
if he _did_ recollect and omit them, I know not what he is fit for,
but I know what would be fit for him. Is the plea of "not
recollecting" such prominent facts to be admitted? Mr. Bowles has
been at a public school, and as I have been publicly educated also, I
can sympathise with his predilection. When we were in the third form
even, had we pleaded on the Monday morning, that we had not brought
up the Saturday's exercise, because "we had forgotten it," what would
have been the reply? And is an excuse, which would not be pardoned to
a schoolboy, to pass current in a matter which so nearly concerns the
fame of the first poet of his age, if not of his country? If Mr.
Bowles so readily forgets the virtues of others, why complain so
grievously that others have a better memory for his own faults? They
are but the faults of an author; while the virtues he omitted from
his catalogue are essential to the justice due to a man.

Mr. Bowles appears, indeed, to be susceptible beyond the privilege of
authorship. There is a plaintive dedication to Mr. Gifford, in which
_he_ is made responsible for all the articles of the Quarterly. Mr.
Southey, it seems, "the most able and eloquent writer in that
Review," approves of Mr. Bowles's publication. Now it seems to me the
more impartial, that notwithstanding that "the great writer of the
Quarterly" entertains opinions opposite to the able article on
Spence, nevertheless that essay was permitted to appear. Is a review
to be devoted to the opinions of any _one_ man?

Must it not vary according to circumstances, and according to the
subjects to be criticised? I fear that writers must take the sweets
and bitters of the public journals as they occur, and an author of so
long a standing as Mr. Bowles might have become accus