[Footnote: One more poetical instance of the power of art, and even its _superiority_ over nature, in poetry; and I have done:--the bust of _Antinous_! Is there any thing in nature like this marble, excepting the Venus? Can there be more _poetry_ gathered into existence than in that wonderful creation of perfect beauty? But the poetry of this bust is in no respect derived from nature, nor from any association of moral exaltedness; for what is there in common with moral nature, and the male minion of Adrian? The very execution is _not natural_, but _super_-natural, or rather _super-artificial,_ for nature has never done so much.
Away, then, with this cant about nature, and "invariable principles of poetry!" A great artist will make a block of stone as sublime as a mountain, and a good poet can imbue a pack of cards with more poetry than inhabits the forests of America. It is the business and the proof of a poet to give the lie to the proverb, and sometimes to "_make a silken purse out of a sow's ear_;" and to conclude with another homely proverb, "a good workman will not find fault with his tools."]
Mr. Bowles, apparently not relying entirely upon his own arguments, has, in person or by proxy, brought forward the names of Southey and Moore. Mr. Southey "agrees entirely with Mr. Bowles in his _invariable_ principles of poetry." The least that Mr. Bowles can do in return is to approve the "invariable principles of Mr. Southey." I should have thought that the word "_invariable_" might have stuck in Southey's throat, like Macbeth's "Amen!" I am sure it did in mine, and I am not the least consistent of the two, at least as a voter. Moore _(et tu, Brute!_) also approves, and a Mr. J. Scott. There is a letter also of two lines from a gentleman in asterisks, who, it seems, is a poet of "the highest rank:"--who _can_ this be? not my friend, Sir Walter, surely. Campbell it can't be; Rogers it won't be.
"You have _hit the nail in_ the head, and * * * * [Pope, I presume] _on_ the head also.
"I _remain_ yours, affectionately, "(Five _Asterisks_.)"
And in asterisks let him remain. Whoever this person may be, he deserves, for such a judgment of Midas, that "the nail" which Mr. Bowles has "hit _in_ the head," should he driven through his own ears; I am sure that they are long enough.