composition. _Vulgarity_ is far worse than downright
_black-guardism_; for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong
sense at times; while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all
things, 'signifying nothing.' It does not depend upon low themes, or
even low-language, for Fielding revels in both;--but is he ever
_vulgar_? No. You see the man of education, the gentleman, and the
scholar, sporting with his subject,--its master, not its slave. Your
vulgar writer is always most vulgar the higher his subject; as the man
who showed the menagerie at Pidcock's was wont to say, 'This, gentlemen,
is the _Eagle_ of the _Sun_, from Archangel in Russia: the _otterer_ it
is, the _igherer_ he flies.'"

* * * * *

In a note on a passage relative to Pope's lines upon Lady Mary W.
Montague, he says--

"I think that I could show, if necessary, that Lady Mary W. Montague was
also greatly to blame in that quarrel, _not_ for having rejected, but
for having encouraged him; but I would rather decline the task--though
she should have remembered her own line, '_He comes too near, that comes
to be denied._' I admire her so much--her beauty, her talents--that I
should do this reluctantly. I, besides, am so attached to the very name
of _Mary_, that as Johnson once said, 'If you called a dog _Harvey_, I
should love him;' so, if you were to call a female of the same species
'Mary,' I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the
same sex with a different appellation. She was an extraordinary woman:
she could translate _Epictetus_, and yet write a song worthy of
Aristippus. The lines,

"'And when the long hours of the public are past,
And we meet, with champaigne and a chicken, at last,
May every fond pleasure that moment endear.'
Be banish'd afar both discretion and fear!
Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,
He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud,
Till,' &c. &c.

There, Mr. Bowles!--what say you to such a supper with such a woman? and
her own description too? Is not her '_champaigne and chicken_' worth a
forest or two? Is it not poetry? It appears to me that this stanza
contains the '_puree_' of the whole philosophy of Epicurus:--I mean the
_practical_ philosophy of his school, not the precepts of the master;
for I have been too long at the university not to know that the
philosopher was himself a moderate man. But after all, would not some of
us