for the latter comprehends wit, humour, and strong sense at times; while the former is a sad abortive attempt at all things, ‘signifying nothing.’  It does not depend upon low themes, or even low-language, for Fielding revels in both;—­but is he ever vulgar?  No.  You see the man of education, the gentleman, and the scholar, sporting with his subject,—­its master, not its slave.  Your vulgar writer is always most vulgar the higher his subject; as the man who showed the menagerie at Pidcock’s was wont to say, ’This, gentlemen, is the Eagle of the Sun, from Archangel in Russia:  the otterer it is, the igherer he flies.’”

* * * * *

In a note on a passage relative to Pope’s lines upon Lady Mary W. Montague, he says—­

“I think that I could show, if necessary, that Lady Mary W. Montague was also greatly to blame in that quarrel, not for having rejected, but for having encouraged him; but I would rather decline the task—­though she should have remembered her own line, ’He comes too near, that comes to be denied.’ I admire her so much—­her beauty, her talents—­that I should do this reluctantly.  I, besides, am so attached to the very name of Mary, that as Johnson once said, ’If you called a dog Harvey, I should love him;’ so, if you were to call a female of the same species ‘Mary,’ I should love it better than others (biped or quadruped) of the same sex with a different appellation.  She was an extraordinary woman:  she could translate Epictetus, and yet write a song worthy of Aristippus.  The lines,

    “’And when the long hours of the public are past,
    And we meet, with champaigne and a chicken, at last,
    May every fond pleasure that moment endear.’ 
    Be banish’d afar both discretion and fear! 
    Forgetting or scorning the airs of the crowd,
    He may cease to be formal, and I to be proud,
    Till,’ &c. &c.

There, Mr. Bowles!—­what say you to such a supper with such a woman? and her own description too?  Is not her ‘champaigne and chicken’ worth a forest or two?  Is it not poetry?  It appears to me that this stanza contains the ‘puree’ of the whole philosophy of Epicurus:—­I mean the practical philosophy of his school, not the precepts of the master; for I have been too long at the university not to know that the philosopher was himself a moderate man.  But after all, would not some of us have been as great fools as Pope?  For my part, I wonder that, with his quick feelings, her coquetry, and his disappointment, he did no more,—­instead of writing some lines, which are to be condemned if false, and regretted if true.”

* * * * *

LETTER 424.  TO MR. HOPPNER.

     “Ravenna, May 11. 1821.