But "a hasty pamphlet was published, in which some personalities respecting Mr. Gilchrist were suffered to appear." If Mr. Bowles will write "hasty pamphlets," why is he so surprised on receiving short answers? The grand grievance to which he perpetually returns is a charge of "_hypochondriacism_," asserted or insinuated in the Quarterly. I cannot conceive a man in perfect health being much affected by such a charge, because his complexion and conduct must amply refute it. But were it true, to what does it amount?--to an impeachment of a liver complaint. "I will tell it to the world," exclaimed the learned Smelfungus.--"You had better," said I, "tell it to your physician." There is nothing dishonourable in such a disorder, which is more peculiarly the malady of students. It has been the complaint of the good, and the wise, and the witty, and even of the gay. Regnard, the author of the last French comedy after Moliere, was atrabilious; and Moliere himself, saturnine. Dr. Johnson, Gray, and Burns, were all more or less affected by it occasionally. It was the prelude to the more awful malady of Collins, Cowper, Swift, and Smart; but it by no means follows that a partial affliction of this disorder is to terminate like theirs. But even were it so,-- "Nor best, nor wisest, are exempt from thee; Folly--Folly's only free." PENROSE. If this be the criterion of exemption, Mr. Bowles's last two pamphlets form a better certificate of sanity than a physician's. Mendehlson and Bayle were at times so overcome with this depression, as to be obliged to recur to seeing "puppet-shows, and counting tiles upon the opposite houses," to divert themselves. Dr. Johnson at times "would have given a limb to recover his spirits." Mr. Bowles, who is (strange to say) fond of quoting Pope, may perhaps answer,-- "Go on, obliging creatures, let me see All which disgrac'd my betters met in me." But the charge, such as it is, neither disgraces them nor him. It is easily disproved if false; and even if proved true, has nothing in it to make a man so very indignant. Mr. Bowles himself appears to be a little ashamed of his "hasty pamphlet;" for he attempts to excuse it by the "great provocation;" that is to say, by Mr. Bowles's supposing that Mr. Gilchrist was the writer of the article in the Quarterly, which he was _not_. "But, in extenuation, not only the _great_ provocation should be remembered, but it ought to be said, that orders were sent to the London booksellers, that the most direct personal passages should be _omitted entirely_," &c. This is what the proverb calls "breaking a head and giving a plaster;" but, in this instance, the plaster was not spread in time, and Mr. Gilchrist does not seem at present disposed to regard Mr. Bowles's courtesies like the rust of the spear of Achilles, which had such "skill in surgery."