them little presents almost daily, as concerttickets, ribbons, fruit, &c. He once sent them a basket of peaches, which, with an affectation of careless gallantry, were separately wrapped in part of the manuscript translation of the Iliad : and he humbly requests them to return the wrappers, as he had no other copy. On another occasion he sent them fans, on which were inscribed his famous lines,

"Come, gentle air," th' Eolian shepherd said, &c.

Martha Blount was not so kind or so attentive to Pope in his last illness as she ought to have been. His love for her seemed blended with his frail existence; and when he was scarcely sensible to any thing else in the world, he was still conscious of the charm of her presence. "When she came into the room," says Spence, "it was enough to give a new turn to his spirits, and a temporary strength to him.”

She survived him eighteen years, and died unmarried at her house in Berkeley Square, in 1762. She is described, about that time, as a little, fair,

prim old woman, very lively, and inclined to gossip. Her undefined connexion with Pope, though it afforded matter for mirth and wonder, never affected her reputation while living; and has rendered her name as immortal as our language and our literature. One cannot help wishing that she had been more interesting, and more worthy of her fame.

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CHAPTER XVI.

POPE AND LADY M. W. MONTAGU.

IN the same year with Martha Blount, and about the same age, died Lady Mary W. Montagu. Every body knows that she was one of Pope's early loves. She had, for several years, suspended his attachment to his first favourites, the Blounts; and she really deserved the preference. But the issue of this romantic attachment was the most bitter, the most irreconcilable enmity. The cause did not proceed so much from any one particular offence on either side, but rather from a multitude of trifling causes, arising naturally out of the characters of both.

When they first met, Pope was about sixand-twenty; and from the recent publication of the Rape of the Lock,' and 'The Temple of Fame,' &c. had reached the pinnacle of fashion and reputation. Lady Mary was in her twentythird year, lately married to a man she loved, and had just burst upon the world in all the blaze of her wit and beauty. Her masculine acquirements and powers of mind-her strong good sense-her extensive views-her frankness, decision, and generosity—her vivacity, and her bright eyes, must altogether have rendered her one of the most fascinating, as she really was one of the most extraordinary, women that ever lived.

There stands, in a conspicuous part of this great city, a certain monument, erected, it is said, at the cost of the ladies of Britain; but in a spirit and taste which, I trust, are not those of my countrywomen at large. Is this our patriotism? We may applaud the brave, who go forth to battle to defend us, and preserve inviolate the sanctity of our hearths and homes; but does it become us to lend our voice to exult in victory, always

bought at the expense of suffering, and aggravate the din and the clamour of war-we, who ought to be the peace-makers of the world, and plead for man against his own fierce passions? A huge brazen image stands up, an impudent (false) witness of our martial enthusiasm; but who amongst us has thought of raising a public statue to Lady Wortley Montagu! to her who has almost banished from the world that pest which once extinguished families and desolated provinces? To her true patriotic spirit,-to her magnanimity, her generous perseverance, in surmounting all obstacles raised by the outcry of ignorance, and the obstinacy of prejudice, we owe the introduction of inoculation;-she ought to stand in marble beside Howard the good.*

In Litchfield Cathedral stands the only memorial ever raised, by public or private gratitude, to Lady Mary; it is a cenotaph, with Beauty weeping the loss of her preserver, and an inscription, of which the following words form the conclusion:-"To perpetuate the memory of such benevolence, and to express her gratitude for the benefit she herself received