the first place and she wanted-how shall I express it?she wanted neatness and personal delicacy; and was in short, that odious thing, a female sloven, as well as that dangerous thing, a female wit.

In those days the style of dress was the most hideous imaginable. The women wore a large quantity of arti ficial hair, in emulation of the tremendous periwigs of the men; and Pope, in one of his letters to Lady Mary mentions her "full bottomed wig," which, he says, "I did but assert to be a bob," and was answered, "Love is blind!" On her return from Turkey, she sometimes allowed her own fine dark hair to flow loose, and was fond of dressing in her Turkish costume. In this she was imitated by seve ral beautiful women of the day, and particularly by her lovely contemporary, Lady Fanny Shirley, (Chesterfield's Fanny, blooming fair:" he seems to have admired her as much as he could possibly admire any thing, next to himself and the Graces.) In her picture at Clarendon Park, she too appears in the habit of Fatima. Apropos, to the loves of the poets, Lady Fanny deserves to be mentioned as the theme of all the rhymesters, and "the joy, the wish, the wonder, the despair," of all the beaux of her day.*

66

But it is time to return to Pope. The epistle of Heloïse to Abelard was published during Lady Mary's absence, and sent to her: and it is clear from a passage in one of his letters, that he wished her to consider the last lines,from

down to

And sure, if fate some future bard shall join,

He best can paint them, who can feel them most, as applicable to himself and to his feelings towards her. And yet, whatever might have been his devotion to Lady Mary before she went abroad, it was increased ten

*See, in Pope's Miscellanies, the sprightly stanzas, beginning "Yes, I beheld th' Athenian Queen." They are addressed to Lady Fanny, who had presented the poet with a standish, and two pens, one of steel and one of gold. She was the fourth daughter of Earl Ferrers. After numbering more adorers in her train than any beauty of her time, she died unmarried, in 1778.-Collins's Peerage, by Brydges.

fold after her memorable travels. At present, when ladies of fashion make excursions of pleasure to the pyramids of Egypt and the ruins of Babylon, a journey to Constantinople is little more than a trip to Rome or Vienna; but in the last age it was a prodigious and marvellous undertaking; and Lady Mary, on her return, was gazed upon as an object of wonder and curiosity, and sought as the most entertaining person in the world: her sprightliness and her beauty, her oriental stories and her Turkish costume, were the rage of the day. With Pope, she was on the most friendly terms:-by his interference and negotiation, a house was procured for her and Mr. Wortley, at Twickenham, so that their intercourse was almost constant. When he finished his translation of the Iliad, in 1720, Gay wrote him a complimentary poem, in which he enumerates the host of friends who welcomed the poet home from Greece; and among them, Lady Mary stands conspicuous.

What lady 's that to whom he gently bends?

Who knows not her! Ah, those are Wortley's eyes;
How art thou honoured, numbered with her friends,-
For she distinguishes the good and wise!

To this period we may also refer the composition of the Stanzas to Lady Mary, which begin, "In beauty and wit." The measure is trivial and disagreeable, but the compliments are very sprightly and pointed.

She sat to Kneller for him in her Turkish dress; and we have the following note from him on the subject, which shows how much he felt the condescension.

"The picture dwells really at my heart, and I have made a perfect passion of preferring your present face to your past. I know and thoroughly esteem yourself of this year. I know no more of Lady Mary Pierrepoint than to admire at what I have heard of her, or be pleased with some fragments of hers, as I am with Sappho's. But

now-I cannot say what I would say of you now. Only still give me cause to say you are good to me, and allow me as much of your person as Sir Godfrey can help me to. Upon conferring with him yesterday, I find he thinks it absolutely necessary to draw your face first, which, he says, can never be set right on your figure, if the drapery and posture be finished before. To give you as little trouble as possible, he purposes to draw your face with crayons, and finish it up at your own house of a morn. ing; from whence he will transfer it to canvass, so that you need not go to sit at his house. This, I must observe, is a manner they seldom draw any but crowned heads, and I observe it with a secret pride and pleasure. Be so kind as to tell me if you care, he should do this to-morrow at twelve. Though, if I am but assured from you of the thing, let the manner and time be what you best like; let every decorum you please be observed. I should be very unworthy of any favour from your hands, if I desired any at the expense of your quiet or conveniency in any degree."

He was charmed with the picture, and composed an extemporary compliment, beginning

The playful smiles around the dimpled mouth,
That happy air of majesty and truth; &c.

which considering that they are Pope's, are strangely defective in rhyme, in sense, and in grammar. In a far different strain are the beautiful lines addressed to Gay during Lady Mary's absence from Twickenham, and which he afterwards endeavoured to suppress. They are curious on this account, as well as for being the solitary example of amatory verse contained in his works.

Ah friend! 'tis true,-this truth you lovers know,
In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow;
In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes,
Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens;
Joy lives not here, to happier seats it flies,
And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes.

What are the gay parterre, the chequer'd shade,
The morning bower, the evening colonnade,
But soft recesses of uneasy minds,

To sigh unheard in to the passing winds?

So the struck deer, in some sequester'd part,
Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart;

There, stretch'd unseen in coverts hid from day,
Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away.

These sweet and musical lines, which fall on the ear with such a lulling harmony, are dashed with discord when we remember that the same woman who inspired them, was afterwards malignantly and coarsely designated as the Sappho of his satires. The generous heart never coolly degraded and insulted what it has once loved; but Pope could not be magnanimous, it was not in his spiteful nature to forgive. He says of himself,

Whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time

Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.*

One of Pope's biographerst seems to insinuate, that he had been led on, by the lady's coquetry, to presume too far, and in consequence received a repulse, which he never forgave. This is not probable: Pope was not likely to be so desperate or dangerous an admirer; nor was Lary Mary, who had written with her diamond ring on a window,

Let this great maxim be my virtue's guide:
In part, she is to blame that has been tried,-
He comes too near, that comes to be denied!-

at all likely to expose herself to such ridiculous audacity. The truth is, I rather imagine, that there was a great deal of vanity on both sides; that the lady was amused and flattered, and the poet bewitched and in earnest: that she gave the first offence by some pointed sarcasm or personal ridicule, in which she was an adept, and that Pope, gradually awakened from his dream of adoration, was stung to the quick by her laughing scorn, and mortified and irri

* "I have often wondered, says the gentle-spirited Cowper, "that the same poet who wrote the Dunciad should have written these lines,

That mercy I to others show,

That mercy show to me!

Alas! for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others, was the measure of the mercy he received!"-Cowper's Letters, vol. iii. p. 195.

+ Mr. Bowles.

tated by the consciousness of his wasted attachment. He makes this confession with extreme bitterness,

Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit.

Prologue to the Satires.

The lines as they stand in a first edition are even more pointed and significant, and have much more asperity.

Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit,
And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit.
Safe as he thought, though all the prudent chid,
He wrote no libels, but my lady did;

Great odds in amorous or poetic game,

Where woman's is the sin, and man's the shame!

The result was a deadly and interminable feud. Lady Mary might possibly have inflicted the first private offence, but Pope gave the first public affront. A man who, under such circumstances, could grossly satirize a female, would, in a less civilized state of society, have revenged himself with a blow. The brutality and cowardice were the

same.

The war of words did not, however, proceed at once to such extremity; the first indication of Pope's revolt from his sworn allegiance, and a conscious hint of the secret cause, may be found in some lines addressed to a lady poetess,* to whom he pays a compliment at Lady Mary's

expense.

Though sprightly Sappho force our love and praise,

A softer wonder my pleased soul surveys,

. The mild Erinna blushing in her bays;

So while the sun's broad beam yet strikes the sight,
All mild appears the moon's more sober light.

Serene in virgin majesty she shines,

And unobserved, the glaring orb declines.

Soon after appeared that ribald and ruffianlike attack on her in the satires. She sent Lord Peterborough to remonstrate with Pope, to whom he denied the intended application; and his disavowal is a proved falsehood. Lady Mary, exasperated, forgot her good sense and her feminine

Erinna: her real name is not known. But she was a friend of Lady Suffolk, who wrote bad verses, and submitted them to Pope for correction.