one can but cover the face. Caprice, arbitrary legislation, sometimes positive blindness and deafness,—these are Landor’s critical marks when he quits pure theory, and sometimes when he does not quit it. [Sidenote: _The revival of the Pope quarrels._] With him we leave the “majorities”—those who, whether greater or lesser critics, were great either as such or in other paths of letters. Some smaller, but in some cases not so small, persons remain, with one or two examples—one specially famous—of what we have called “the Adversaries.” And first we must touch (if only in order to deal with yet another of the majorities themselves, who has seemed to some to be a critic) on the “Pope a Poet” quarrel. [Sidenote: _Bowles._] We have seen[535] that this quarrel, originally raised by Joseph Warton, was even by him latterly waged as by one _cauponans bellum_; but a lazily and gingerly waged war is generally a long one, and this instance did not discredit the rule. Johnson’s intervention[536] in it, in his _Life_ of Pope, was sensible and moderate—indeed, with certain necessary allowances, it is fairly decisive. But Pope, among his other peculiarities, has had the fate of making foes of his editors, and this was the case with the Reverend William Lisle Bowles, who revived the fainting battle,[537] not to any one’s advantage or particular credit, and to his own dire tribulation. Bowles is one of those not uninteresting people, in all divisions of history, who, absolutely rather null, have not inconsiderable relative importance. The influence of his early sonnets on Coleridge, and through Coleridge on the whole Romantic revival in England, is well known, and not really surprising. In the remainder of his long and on the whole blameless life, he committed a great deal of verse which, though not exactly bad, is utterly undistinguished and unimportant. His theory of poetry, however, though somewhat one-sided, was better than his practice: and it was rather as a result of that dangerous thing Reaction, and from a lack of alertness and catholicity, than from positive heresy, that he fell foul of Pope. In his edition he laid down, and in the controversy following he defended,[538] certain “invariable principles of Poetry,” of which the first and foremost was that images, thoughts, &c., derived from Nature and Passion, are always more sublime and pathetic than those drawn from Art and Manners. And it was chiefly on this ground that he, of course following his leader Warton, but using newer material and tactics, disabled, partially or wholly, the claims of Pope. Hereupon arose a hubbub. Campbell in the _Specimens_[539] took a hand; Byron wrote a _Letter to John Murray_[540] in defence of his favourite, and in ridicule of Bowles; auxiliaries and adversaries ran up on both sides. Whether Bowles was most happy or unhappy in the turmoil I am unable to say, but he was certainly put in a great state of agitation, and