Mr. Bowles "will now plainly set before the literary public all the circumstances which have led to his name and Mr. Gilchrist's being brought together," &c. Courtesy requires, in speaking of others and ourselves, that we should place the name of the former first—and not "Ego et Rex meus." Mr. Bowles should have written "Mr. Gilchrist's name and his."
This point he wishes "particularly to address to those most respectable characters, who have the direction and management of the periodical critical press." That the press may be, in some instances, conducted by respectable characters is probable enough; but if they are so, there is no occasion to tell them of it; and if they are not, it is a base adulation. In either case, it looks like a kind of flattery, by which those gentry are not very likely to be softened; since it would be difficult to find two passages in fifteen pages more at variance, than Mr. Bowles's prose at the beginning of this pamphlet, and his verse at the end of it. In page 4. he speaks of "those most respectable characters who have the direction, &c. of the periodical press," and in page 10. we find—
"Ye dark inquisitors, a monk-like band,
Who o'er some shrinking victim-author stand,
A solemn, secret, and vindictive brand,
Only terrific in your cowl and hood."
And so on—to "bloody law" and "red scourges," with other similar phrases, which may not be altogether agreeable to the above-mentioned "most respectable characters." Mr. Bowles goes on, "I concluded my observations in the last Pamphleteer with feelings not unkind towards Mr. Gilchrist, or" [it should be nor] "to the author of the review of Spence, be he whom he might."—"I was in hopes, as I have always been ready to admit any errors I might have been led into, or prejudice I might have entertained, that even Mr. Gilchrist might be disposed to a more amicable mode of discussing what I had advanced in regard to Pope's moral character." As Major Sturgeon observes, "There never was a set of more amicable officers—with the exception of a boxing-bout between Captain Shears and the Colonel."
A page and a half—nay only a page before—Mr. Bowles re-affirms his conviction, that "what he has said of Pope's moral character is (generally speaking) true, and that his "poetical principles are invariable and invulnerable." He has also published three pamphlets,—ay, four of the same tenour,—and yet, with this declaration and these declamations staring him and his adversaries in the face, he speaks of his "readiness to admit errors or to abandon prejudices!!!" His use of the word "amicable" reminds me of the Irish Institution (which I have somewhere heard or read of) called the "Friendly Society," where the president always carried pistols in his pocket, so that when one amicable gentleman knocked down another, the difference might be adjusted on the spot, at the harmonious distance of twelve paces.
But Mr. Bowles "has since read a publication by him (Mr. Gilchrist) containing such vulgar slander, affecting private life and character," &c. &c.; and Mr. Gilchrist has also had the advantage of reading a publication by Mr. Bowles sufficiently imbued with personality; for one of the first and principal topics of reproach is that he is a grocer, that he has a "pipe in his mouth, ledger-book, green canisters, dingy shop-boy, half a hogshead of brown treacle," &c. Nay, the same delicate raillery is upon the very title-page. When controversy has once commenced upon this footing, as Dr. Johnson said to Dr. Percy, "Sir, there is an end of politeness—we are to be as rude as we please—Sir, you said that I was short-sighted." As a man's profession is generally no more in his own power than his person—both having been made out for him—it is hard that he should be reproached with either, and still more that an honest calling should be made a reproach. If there is any thing more honourable to Mr. Gilchrist than another it is, that being engaged in commerce he has had the taste, and found the leisure, to become so able a proficient in the higher literature of his own and other countries. Mr. Bowles, who will be proud to own Glover, Chatterton, Burns, and Bloomfleld for his peers, should hardly have quarrelled with Mr. Gilchrist for his critic. Mr. Gilchrist's station, however, which might conduct him to the highest civic honours, and to boundless wealth, has nothing to require apology; but even if it had, such a reproach was not very gracious on the part of a clergyman, nor graceful on that of a gentleman. The allusion to "Christian criticism" is not particularly happy, especially where Mr. Gilchrist is accused of having "set the first example of this mode in Europe." What Pagan criticism may have been we know but little; the names of Zoilus and Aristarchus survive, and the works of Aristotle, Longinus, and Quintilian: but of "Christian criticism" we have already had some specimens in the works of Philelphus, Poggius, Scaliger, Milton, Salmasius, the Cruscanti (versus Tasso), the French Academy (against the Cid), and the antagonists of Voltaire and of Pope—to say nothing of some articles in most of the reviews, since their earliest institution in the person of their respectable and still prolific parent, "The Monthly." Why, then, is Mr. Gilchrist to be singled out "as having set the first example?" A sole page of Milton or Salmasius contains more abuse—rank, rancorous, unleavened abuse—than all that can be raked forth from the whole works of many recent critics. There are some, indeed, who still keep up the good old custom; but fewer English than foreign. It is a pity that Mr. Bowles cannot witness some of the Italian controversies, or become the subject of one. He would then look upon Mr. Gilchrist as a panegyrist.
In the long sentence quoted from the article in "The London Magazine," there is one coarse image, the justice of whose application I shall not pretend to determine:—"The pruriency with which his nose is laid to the ground" is an expression which, whether founded or not, might have been omitted. But the "anatomical minuteness" appears to me justified even by Mr. Bowles's own subsequent quotation. To the point:—"Many facts tend to prove the peculiar susceptibility of his passions; nor can we implicitly believe that the connexion between him and Martha Blount was of a nature so pure and innocent as his panegyrist Ruffhead would have us believe," &c.—"At no time could she have regarded Pope personally with attachment," &c.—"But the most extraordinary circumstance in regard to his connexion with female society, was the strange mixture of indecent and even profane levity which his conduct and language often exhibited. The cause of this particularity may be sought, perhaps, in his consciousness of physical defect, which made him affect a character uncongenial, and a language opposite to the truth."—If this is not "minute moral anatomy," I should be glad to know what is! It is dissection in all its branches. I shall, however, hazard a remark or two upon this quotation.