in general, are _per
se_ more adapted to the higher species of poetry than those derived from
incidental and transient manners."

The admirers of Pope were not slow in joining issue with his critic, not
only upon his general estimate of the poet, but upon the principle here
laid down. Thomas Campbell, in his "Specimens of the British Poets"
(1819), defended Pope both as a man and a poet, and maintained that
"exquisite descriptions of artificial objects are not less characteristic
of genius than the description of simple physical appearances." He
instanced Milton's description of Satan's spear and shield, and gave an
animated picture of the launching of a ship of the line as an example of
the "sublime objects of artificial life." Bowles replied in a letter to
Campbell on "The Invariable Principles of Poetry." He claimed that it
was the appearances of nature, the sea and the sky, that lent sublimity
to the launch of the ship, and asked: "If images derived from art are as
beautiful and sublime as those derived from nature, why was it necessary
to bring your ship off the stocks?" He appealed to his adversary whether
the description of a game of ombre was as poetical as that of a walk in
the forest, and whether "the sylph of Pope, 'trembling over the fumes of
a chocolate pot,' be an image as poetical as that of delicate and quaint
Ariel, who sings 'Where the bee sucks, there lurk (_sic_) I.'" Campbell
replied in the _New Monthly Magazine_, of which he was editor, and this
drew out another rejoinder from Bowles. Meanwhile Byron had also
attacked Bowles in two letters to Murray (1821), to which the
indefatigable pamphleteer made elaborate replies. The elder Disraeli,
Gifford, Octavius Gilchrist, and one Martin M'Dermot also took a hand in
the fight--all against Bowles--and William Roscoe, the author of the
"Life of Lorenzo de Medici," attacked him in an edition of Pope which he
brought out in 1824. The rash detractor of the little Twitnam
nightingale soon found himself engaged single-handed against a host; but
he was equal to the occasion, in volubility if not in logic, and poured
out a series of pamphlets, covering in all some thousand pages, and
concluding with "A Final Appeal to the Literary Public" (1825), followed
by "more last words of Baxter," in the shape of "Lessons in Criticism to
William Roscoe" (1825).

The opponents of Bowles maintained, in general, that in poetry the
subject is nothing, but the executi