There are those who will believe this, and those who will not. You, sir, know how far I am sincere, and whether my opinion, not only in the short work intended for publication, and in private letters which can never be published, has or has not been the same. I look upon this as the declining age of English poetry; no regard for others, no selfish feeling, can prevent me from seeing this, and expressing the truth. There can be no worse sign for the taste of the times than the depreciation of Pope. It would be better to receive for proof Mr. Cobbett's rough but strong attack upon Shakspeare and Milton, than to allow this smooth and "candid" undermining of the reputation of the most _perfect_ of our poets, and the purest of our moralists. Of his power in the _passions_, in description, in the mock heroic, I leave others to descant. I take him on his strong ground as an _ethical_ poet: in the former, none excel; in the mock heroic and the ethical, none equal him; and in my mind, the latter is the highest of all poetry, because it does that in _verse_, which the greatest of men have wished to accomplish in prose. If the essence of poetry must be a _lie_, throw it to the dogs, or banish it from your republic, as Plato would have done. He who can reconcile poetry with truth and wisdom, is the only true "_poet_" in its real sense, "the _maker_" "the _creator_,"--why must this mean the "liar," the "feigner," the "tale-teller?" A man may make and create better things than these. I shall not presume to say that Pope is as high a poet as Shakspeare and Milton, though his enemy, Warton, places him immediately under them.[1] I would no more say this than I would assert in the mosque (once Saint Sophia's), that Socrates was a greater man than Mahomet. But if I say that he is very near them, it is no more than has been asserted of Burns, who is supposed "To rival all but Shakspeare's name below." [Footnote 1: If the opinions cited by Mr. Bowles, of Dr. Johnson _against_ Pope, are to be taken as decisive authority, they will also hold good against Gray, Milton, Swift, Thomson, and Dryden: in that case what becomes of Gray's poetical, and Milton's moral character? even of Milton's _poetical_ character, or, indeed, of _English_ poetry in general? for Johnson strips many a leaf from every laurel. Still Johnson's is the finest critical work extant, and can never be read without instruction and delight.]