hes at once
both poet and critic.

"_Philip._--I cannot allow the parallel. In Copley's best pictures,
the drapery, though you may almost hear it rustle, is wholly a
subordinate matter. Witness some of those in our College-hall here at
Cambridge--that of Madam Boylston especially. I remember being once
much struck with the remark of a friend, who convinced me of the
fact, that Copley avoided the painting of wigs whenever he could,
thus getting a step nearer nature. Pope would have made them a
prominent object. I grant what you say about the 'Rape of the Lock,'
but this does not prove that Pope was a poet. If you wish an instance
of a _poet's_ fancy, look into the 'Midsummer Night's Dream.' I can
allow that Pope has written what is entertaining, but surely not
poetical. Show me a line that makes you love God and your neighbour
better, that inclines you to meekness, charity, and forbearance, and
I will show you a hundred that make it easier for you to be the
odious reverse of all these. In many a Pagan poet there is more
Christianity. No poet could write a 'Dunciad,' or even read it. You
have persuaded yourself into thinking Pope a poet, as, in looking for
a long time at a stick which we believe to be an animal of some kind,
we fancy that it is stirring. His letters are amusing, but do not
increase one's respect for him. When you speak of his being
classical, I am sure that you jest."

The waves of the Atlantic have wafted acorns dropped from the British oak
to the Western shores, and a wide and strong grove is growing up there. We
feel our kindred with the fellow-beings of our tongue, and rejoice with a
natural and keen interest in every thing true, great, and good that is
produced within the States. Powers are moving there, that may, that do,
want much tempering; but of which, when tempered, we augur high things.
One such tempering is reverence of the past, and Pope is one of the great
names which England tenders to young America. We augur ill, and are uneasy
for our cousins or nephews, when we see them giving themselves airs, and
knowing better than their betters. What are we to think, when instead of
the fresh vigour which should rise on the soil of the self-governed, we
find repetition, for the worse, of the feeblest criticisms which have
disgraced some of our own weaklings? This presumptuous youngling talks
tech