And now that we have heard the Catholic repreached with envy, duplicity, licentiousness, avarice--what was the Calvinist? He attempted the most atrocious of crimes in the Christian code, viz. suicide--and why? because he was to be examined whether he was fit for an office which he seems to wish to have made a sinecure. His connection with Mrs. Unwin was pure enough, for the old lady was devout, and he was deranged; but why then is the infirm and then elderly Pope to be reproved for his connection with Martha Blount: Cowper was the almoner of Mrs. Throgmorton; but Pope's charities were his own, and they were noble and extensive, far beyond his fortune's warrant. Pope was the tolerant yet steady adherent of the most bigoted of sects; and Cowper the most bigoted and despondent sectary that ever anticipated damnation to himself or others. Is this harsh? I know it is, and I do not assert it as my opinion of Cowper _personally_, but to _show what might_ be said, with just as great an appearance of truth and candour, as all the odium which has been accumulated upon Pope in similar speculations. Cowper was a good man, and lived at a fortunate time for his works. [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."]