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tion to himself or others. Is this harsh ? Iknow it is-, and I do not assert it as my opinionof Cowper personally , but to show what mightbe said, with just as great an appearance of truthand candour, as all the odium which has beenaccumulated upon Pope in similar speculations.Cowper was a good man, and lived at a fortu-nate time for his works.
Mr. Bowles, apparently not relying entirelyupon his own arguments, has in person or byproxy brought forward the Dames of Southeyand Moore. Mr. Southey « agrees entirely withMr. Bowles in his invariable principles of poe-try.* The least that Mr. Bowles can do in re-turn is to approve the < ( invariable principles ofMr. Southey.” I should have thought that theword ^invariable ” might have stuck in Southey’sthroat, like Macbeth’s « Amen ! ” I am sure itdid in mine, and I am not the least consistentof the two, at least as a voter. Moore ( et tu yBrute!) also approves, and a Mr. J.Scott. Thereis a letter also of two lines from a gentlemanin asterisks, who, it seems, is a poet of « the