rely different subject. What else can you bring forward?

"_Philip._--Only the fact, that, by going back to the more natural
style of the Elizabethan writers, our verse has gained in harmony as
well as strength. No matter whether Pope is describing the cane of a
fop, or the speech of a demigod, the pause must always fall on the
same syllable, and the sense be chopped off by the same rhyme.
Achilles cannot gallop his horses round the walls of Troy, with
Hector dragging behind his chariot, except he keep time to the
immitigable seesaw of the couplet."

Master Lowell gives tongue with a plagiarism from Southey. In his _Life of
Cowper_ that great writer somewhat rashly says, "The age of Pope was the
golden age of poets--but it was the pinchbeck age of poetry." What is
pardonable in Southey is knoutable in his ape. Think of one American
Cantab playfully rating and complimenting another on having caught him
more than once with the _Tatler_ in his hand, and with having heard him
praising Dryden's prefaces! What liberality--nay, what universality of
taste! Absolutely able, in the reaches of his transatlantic soul, to
relish Dryden's prefaces! But in his appeal from Philip drunk to Philip
sober, Philip cannot, crop-sick, but nauseate the thought of Pope being a
poet.

The whole dialogue--somewhat of the longest--_tedious_ exceedingly--is
polluted with similar impudencies. "The strong point in Pope's displays of
sentiment, is in the graceful management of a cambric handkerchief. You do
not believe a word that Heloise says, and feel all the while that she is
squeezing out her tears as if from a half-dry sponge." Such is the effect
of too copious draughts from that Hippocrene which alternately discharges
cock-tail and mint-julep. John, however, does not go the whole hog with
Philip. He erects his ears to their full length, and brays thus--"_I do
not think that you do Pope justice!_" and then does Pope justice as
follows: "_His translation of Homer is as bad as it can be, I admit!_" I
ADMIT! "But surely you cannot deny the merit of lively and ingenious
fancy to his 'Rape of the Lock;' nor of knowledge of life, and a certain
polished classicalness, to his epistles and satires. His portraits are
like those of Copley, of fine gentlemen and ladies, whose silks and satins
are the best part of them." But poor, cautious, timid, trimming,
turn-about John cannot so conciliate bully Philip, who squabas