I now come to Mr. Bowles's "invariable principles of poetry." These Mr. Bowles and some of his correspondents pronounce "unanswerable;" and they are "unanswered," at least by Campbell, who seems to have been astounded by the title. The sultan of the time being offered to ally himself to a king of France because "he hated the word league;" which proves that the Padishan understood French. Mr. Campbell has no need of my alliance, nor shall I presume to offer it; but I do hate that word "_invariable_." What is there of _human_, be it poetry, philosophy, wit, wisdom, science, power, glory, mind, matter, life, or death, which is "_invariable_?" Of course I put things divine out of the question. Of all arrogant baptisms of a book, this title to a pamphlet appears the most complacently conceited. It is Mr. Campbell's part to answer the contents of this performance, and especially to vindicate his own "Ship," which Mr. Bowles most triumphantly proclaims to have struck to his very first fire. "Quoth he, there was a _Ship;_ Now let me go, thou grey-haired loon, Or my staff shall make thee skip." It is no affair of mine, but having once begun, (certainly not by my own wish, but called upon by the frequent recurrence to my name in the pamphlets,) I am like an Irishman in a "row," "any body's customer." I shall therefore say a word or two on the "Ship." Mr. Bowles asserts that Campbell's "Ship of the Line" derives all its poetry, not from "_art_," but from "_nature_." "Take away the waves, the winds, the sun, &c. &c. _one_ will become a stripe of blue bunting; and the other a piece of coarse canvass on three tall poles." Very true; take away the "waves," "the winds," and there will be no ship at all, not only for poetical, but for any other purpose; and take away "the sun," and we must read Mr. Bowles's pamphlet by candle-light. But the "poetry" of the "Ship" does _not_ depend on "the waves," &c.; on the contrary, the "Ship of the Line" confers its own poetry upon the waters, and heightens _theirs._ I do not deny, that the "waves and winds," and above all "the sun," are highly poetical; we know it to our cost, by the many descriptions of them in verse: but if the waves bore only the foam upon their bosoms, if the winds wafted only the sea-weed to the shore, if the sun shone neither upon pyramids, nor fleets, nor fortresses, would its beams be equally poetical? I think not: the poetry is at least reciprocal. Take away "the Ship of the line" "swinging round" the "calm water," and the calm water becomes a somewhat monotonous thing to look at, particularly if not transparently _clear_; witness the thousands who pass by without looking on it at all. What was it attracted the thousands to the launch? they might have seen the poetical "calm water" at Wapping, or in the "London Dock," or in the Paddington Canal, or in a horse-pond, or in a slop-basin, or in any other vase. They might have heard the poetical winds howling through the chinks