hew to the doctor, for the treatment his uncle had
received, sent Pope a challenge. The modern, like the ancient
Horace, was of a nature liable to panic at such critical
moments. Pope consulted some military friends, who declared
that his _person_ ought to protect him from any such
redundance of valour as was thus formally required; however,
one of them accepted the challenge for him, and gave Bentley
the option either of fighting or apologising; who, on this
occasion, proved, what is usual, that the easiest of the two
was the quickest done.

[203] I shall preserve one specimen, so classically elegant, that Pope
himself might have composed it. It is from the pen of that
Leonard Welsted whose "Aganippe" Pope has so shamefully
characterised--

"Flow, Welsted, flow, like thine inspirer, beer!"

Can the reader credit, after this, that Welsted, who was clerk
in ordinary at the Ordnance Office, was a man of family and
independence, of elegant manners and a fine fancy, but who
considered poetry only as a passing amusement? He has,
however, left behind, amid the careless productions of his
muse, some passages wrought up with equal felicity and power.
There are several original poetical views of nature scattered
in his works, which have been collected by Mr. Nichols, that
would admit of a comparison with some of established fame.

Welsted imagined that the spirit of English poetry was on its
decline in the age of Pope, and allegorises the state of our
poetry in a most ingenious comparison. The picture is
exquisitely wrought, like an ancient gem: one might imagine
Anacreon was turned critic:--

"A flask I rear'd whose sluice began to fail,
And told, from Phaerus, this facetious tale:--
Sabina, very old and very dry,
Chanced, on a time, an EMPTY FLASK to spy:
The flask but lately had been thrown aside,
With the rich grape of Tuscan vineyards dyed;
But lately, gushing from the slender spout,
Its life, in purple streams, had issued out.
_The costly flavour still to sense remain'd_,
And still its sides the violet colour stain'd:
A sight so sweet taught wrinkled age to smile;
Pleased, she im