Between astonishment and grief, I was tearless. * * * * * LETTER TO JOHN MURRAY, ESQ. ON THE REV. W.L. BOWLES'S STRICTURES ON THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF POPE. * * * * * "I'll play at _Bowls_ with the sun and moon."--OLD SONG. "My mither's auld, Sir, and she has rather forgotten hersel in speaking to my Leddy, that canna weel bide to be contradickit, (as I ken nobody likes it, if they could help themsels.)" TALES OF MY LANDLORD, _Old Mortality_, vol. ii. p. 163. * * * * * Ravenna, February 7. 1821. Dear Sir, In the different pamphlets which you have had the goodness to send me, on the Pope and Bowles' controversy, I perceive that my name is occasionally introduced by both parties. Mr. Bowles refers more than once to what he is pleased to consider "a remarkable circumstance," not only in his letter to Mr. Campbell, but in his reply to the Quarterly. The Quarterly also and Mr. Gilchrist have conferred on me the dangerous honour of a quotation; and Mr. Bowles indirectly makes a kind of appeal to me personally, by saying, "Lord Byron, _if he remembers_ the circumstance, will _witness_"--_(witness_ IN ITALICS, an ominous character for a testimony at present). I shall not avail myself of a "non mi ricordo," even after so long a residence in Italy;--I _do_ "remember the circumstance,"--and have no reluctance to relate it (since called upon so to do), as correctly as the distance of time and the impression of intervening events will permit me. In the year 1812, more than three years after the publication of "English Bards and Scotch Reviewers," I had the honour of meeting Mr. Bowles in the house of our venerable host of "Human Life," &c. the last Argonaut of classic English poetry, and the Nestor of our inferior race of living poets. Mr. Bowles calls this "soon after" the publication; but to me three years appear a considerable segment of the immortality of a modern poem. I recollect nothing of "the rest of the company going into another room,"--nor, though I well remember the topography of our host's elegant and classically furnished mansion, could I swear to the very room where the conversation occurred, though the "taking _down_ the poem" seems to fix it in the library. Had it been "taken _up_" it would probably have been in the drawing-room. I presume also that the "remarkable circumstance" took place _after_ dinner; as I conceive that neither Mr. Bowles's politeness nor appetite would have allowed him to detain "the rest of the company" standing round their chairs in the "other room," while we were discussing "the Woods of Madeira," instead of circulating its vintage. Of Mr. Bowles's "good humour" I have a full and not ungrateful recollection; as also of his gentlemanly manners and agreeable conversation. I speak of the _whole_, and not of particulars; for whether he did or did not use the precise words