[11] "Dejection: An Ode" (1802).
[12] SONNET XX.
November, 1792.
"There is strange music in the stirring wind
When lowers the autumnal eve, and all alone
To the dark wood's cold covert thou art gone
Whose ancient trees, on the rough slope reclined,
Rock, and at times scatter their tresses sear.
If in such shades, beneath their murmuring,
Thou late hast passed the happier hours of spring,
With sadness thou wilt mark the fading year;
Chiefly if one with whom such sweets at morn
Or eve thou'st shared, to distant scenes shall stray.
O Spring, return! return, auspicious May!
But sad will be thy coming, and forlorn,
If she return not with thy cheering ray,
Who from these shades is gone, gone far away."
[13] Cf. Scott's "Harp of the North, that mouldering long hast hung," etc. "Lady of the Lake," Canto I.
[14] "Shall gentle Coleridge pass unnoticed here,
To turgid ode and tumid stanza dear?"
—"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."
[15] No. xxix., August, 1819, "Remarks on Don Juan."
[16] "Time was, ere yet in these degenerate days
Ignoble themes obtained mistaken praise.
When sense and wit with poesy allied,
No fabled graces, nourished side by side. . . .
Then, in this happy isle, a Pope's pure strain
Sought the rapt soul to charm, nor sought in vain;
A polished nation's praise aspired to claim,
And raised the people's, as the poet's fame. . . .
[But] Milton, Dryden, Pope, alike forgot,
Resign their hallowed bays to Walter Scott."
—"English Bards and Scotch Reviewers."
[17] For the benefit of any reader who may wish to follow up the steps of the Pope controversy, I give the titles of Bowles' successive pamphlets. "The Invariable Principles of Poetry: A Letter to Thomas Campbell, Esq.," 1819. "A Reply to an 'Unsentimental Sort of Critic,'" Bath, 1820. [This was in answer to a review of "Spence's Anecdotes" in the Quarterly in October, 1820.] "A Vindication of the Late Editor of Pope's Works," London, 1821, second edition. [This was also a reply to the Quarterly reviewer and to Gilchrist's letters in the London Magazine, and was first printed in vol. xvii., Nos. 33, 34, and 35 of the Pamphleteer.] "An Answer to Some Observations of Thomas Campbell, Esq., in his Specimens of British Poets" (1822). "An Address to Thomas Campbell, Esq., Editor of the New Monthly Magazine, in Consequence of an Article in that Publication" (1822). "Letters to Lord Byron on a Question of Poetical Criticism," London, 1822. "A Final Appeal to the Literary Public Relative to Pope, in Reply to Certain Observations of Mr. Roscoe," London, 1823. "Lessons in Criticism to William Roscoe, Esq., with Further Lessons in Criticism to a Quarterly Reviewer," London, 1826. Gilchrist's three letters to Bowles were published in 1820-21. M'Dermot's "Letter to the Rev. W. L. Bowles in Reply to His Letter to Thomas Campbell, Esq., and to His Two Letters to Lord Byron," was printed at London, in 1822.
[18] "With throats unslaked, with black lips baked,
We could not laugh nor wail," etc.