"To do for hate what Mallet did for hire"
will long be remembered to his prejudice. His so-called "invariable principles of poetry" maintained in his Pope and in his controversy with Byron and Campbell, are better based than critics hitherto have been willing to admit. Considering how sharply the reverend Pamphleteer was hit by the Peer's ridicule, it must be always remembered, to the credit of his Christianity, that possibly the most popular of all the dirges written on Lord Byron's death came from Mr. Bowles's pen; and the following tributary stanza is deepened in its music by the memory of the former war.
"I will not ask sad Pity to deplore
His wayward errors who thus sadly died,
Still less, Childe Harold, now thou art no more,
Will I say aught of Genius misapplied;
Of the past shadows of thy spleen or pride:
But I will bid th' Arcadian cypress wave,
Pluck the green laurel from the Perseus's side,
And pray thy spirit may such quiet have
That not one thought unkind be murmured o'er thy grave."
It only remains for us to add, that Mr. Bowles wrote a somewhat poor life of Bishop Ken—that he was famous for his Parson Adams-like forgetfulness—that his wife died in 1844, at the age of 72—and that he himself at the time of his death was in his eighty-eighth year.—London Athenæum.
MORNING IN SPRING.
(from the german of gustav solling.)
From the valleys to the hills
See the morning mists arise;
And the early dew distills
Balmy incense to the skies.
Purple clouds, with vapory grace,
Round the sun their soft sail fling;
Now they fade—and from his face
Beams the new-born bliss of Spring!