be done by arguments, and sent her into a foreign country, where she was obliged to converse only with those from whom her uncle had nothing to fear.

Her lover took care to repeat his vows, but his letters were intercepted and carried to her guardian, who directed her to be watched with still greater vigilance, till of this restraint she grew so impatient, that she bribed a woman servant to procure her a sword, which she directed to her heart.

From this account, given with evident intention to raise the lady's character, it does not appear that she had any claim to praise, nor much to compassion. She seems to have been im-3 patient, violent, and ungovernable. Her uncle's power could not have lasted long; the hour of liberty and choice would have come in time. But her desires were too hot for delay, and she liked self-murder better than suspense.

Nor is it discovered that the uncle, whoever he was, is with much justice delivered to posterity as " a false Guardian ;” 31 he seems to have done only that for which a guardian is appointed; he endeavoured to direct his niece till she should be able to direct herself. Poetry has not often been worse employed than in dignifying the amorous fury of a raving girl.32

"The epithet false is not in Ayre or in Ruffhead. Ayre calls him severe, Ruffhead calls him rigid.

A posthumous note to the 'Verses,' when published by Warburton, has Pope's initial to it, and is as follows:

"See the Duke of Buckingham's 'Verses to a Lady designing to retire into a Monastery,' compared with Mr. Pope's 'Letters to several Ladies,' p. 206, 4to. edition. She seems to be the same person whose unfortunate death is the subject of this poem."-P.

The Duke's verses were first printed in Tonson's 'Sixth Miscellany' (1709), in the same volume in which Pope's Pastorals were first published, and are there (p. 327) entitled, "To a Person who was designing to retire into a Monastery. Written by the E. of M-, now D. of B-." The verses, poor in themselves, are of no assistance in what Johnson calls his "fruitless inquiry;" and the page of the volume of Letters' (4to. 1737) does not contain one word either about the lady or the poem. All that is known of the lady and her adventures with anything like accuracy is told by Joseph Warton:

“After many and wide inquiries, I have been informed that her name was Wainsbury, and that (which is a singular circumstance) she was as ill-shaped and deformed as our author. Her death was not by a sword, but, what would less bear to be told poetically, she hanged herself."— Warton's Pope, 9 vols. 8vo., 1797, vol. i. p. 336.

VOL. III.

C

Sir

Not long after he wrote The Rape of the Lock,' the most airy, the most ingenious, and the most delightful of all his compositions, occasioned by a frolic of gallantry rather too familiar, in which Lord Petre 33 cut off a lock of Mrs. Arabella Fermor's hair.34 This, whether stealth or violence, was so much resented, that the commerce of the two families, before very friendly, was interrupted. Mr. Caryl, a gentleman who, being secretary to King James's Queen, had followed his mistress into France, and who, being the author of 'Sir Solomon Single,' a comedy, and some translations,35 was entitled to the notice of a wit, solicited Pope to endeavour a reconciliation by a ludicrous poem, which might bring both the parties to a

Sir John Hawkins, in a note in Johnson's 'Lives,' has given us a slightly different name:

"I have in my possession a letter to Dr. Johnson, containing the name of the lady; and a reference to a gentleman well known in the literary world for her history. Him I have seen; and from a memorandum of some particulars to the purpose communicated to him by a lady of quality, he informs me that the Unfortunate Lady's name was Withinbury, corruptly pronounced Winbury; that she was in love with Pope, and would have married him; that her guardian, though she was deformed in her person, looking upon such a match as beneath her, sent her to a convent, and that a noose, and not a sword, put an end to her life."-H.

I suspect that Pope knew no more personally of Mrs. or Miss Wainsbury than he knew of Mrs. Tempest, whom he has celebrated in his fourth Pastoral. Mrs. Tempest was lamented to please Mr. Walsh, and the Unfortunate Lady lamented to please the Duke of Buckingham.

Since this was written an ingenious attempt has been made in 'The Athenæum of 15th July, 1854, to identify the Unfortunate Lady with a Mrs. Weston (born Elizabeth Gage), who married John Weston, of Sutton, near Guildford, Esq., and died after a life of wedded misery at Guildford, in the year 1724. Mrs. Weston was well known to Pope, who took a warm interest in her sorrows; but I cannot call the supposition successful, for the Verses in which she is said to be lamented as dead were actually published seven years before her death. She may, however, like Charles V., have taken a part in her own funeral.

33 Robert, seventh Lord Petre, died 22nd March, 1712-13, in his 23rd year. 34 Mrs. or Miss Arabella Fermor was afterwards married to Francis Perkins, Esq., of Ufton Court, in Berkshire. She died at Ufton in 1738. (See 'Gent.'s Mag.,' 1817, Part ii. p. 591.) It is a singular fact, as Mr. Croker has observed to me, that notwithstanding one of Pope's best letters was addressed to this lady on her marriage, no one of his various editors or biographers had taken the trouble to inquire, or at least to give us, the husband's name, or any particulars concerning Belinda beyond the loss of her Lock. Mr. Carruthers was the first to do so in his edition published in 1853. There is a portrait of her and another of Sir George Brown (Sir Plume) at Tusmore, in Oxfordshire. 35 He translated Briseis to Achilles, in Dryden's 'Ovid,' 1680.

better temper. 36 In compliance with Caryl's request, though his name was for a long time marked only by the first and last letter, C-1, a poem of two cantos was written (1711), as is said, in a fortnight, and sent to the offended lady, who liked it well enough to show it: and, with the usual process of literary transactions, the author, dreading a surreptitious edition, was forced to publish it.

The event is said to have been such as was desired; the pacification and diversion of all to whom it related, except Sir George Brown, who complained with some bitterness that, in the character of Sir Plume, he was made to talk nonsense. Whether all this be true I have some doubt, for at Paris, a few years ago, a niece of Mrs. Fermor, who presided in an English convent, mentioned Pope's work with very little gratitude, rather as an insult than an honour; 37 and she may be supposed to have inherited the opinion of her family.

At its first appearance 38 it was termed by Addison “ merum sal." Pope, however, saw that it was capable of improvement; and having luckily contrived to borrow his machinery from the Rosicrucians, imparted the scheme with which his head was teeming to Addison, who told him that his work, as it stood, was "a delicious little thing," s " 39 and gave him no encourage

ment to retouch it.

This has been too hastily considered as an instance of

36 Here is an error. The Caryl who was "Secretary to King James's Queen" was John Lord Caryl, so created by King James in exile, who died 4th Sept. 1711, aged about 86. Pope could never have seen him. The Caryl of the 'Rape of the Lock' was either a son or nephew of the Secretary, and was buried at Harting, in Sussex, 17th April, 1736. At Pope's return from Greece, or to drop Gay's poetical expression-at his completion of the 'Iliad,' among those who congratulated him on his successful labours, the Caryls, we are told, came by "dozens." Pope corresponded with at least three of this name; and to add to our difficulty in distinguishing the family, Pope's editors, misled by the initials, have, as Mr. Croker has pointed out to me, given some of the John Caryl letters to James Craggs. Three of the Caryls occur in 1715 as subscribers to Pope's 'Iliad,' viz. The Honourable John Caryl, Esq.," "John Caryl, jun., Esq.," and "Richard Caryl, Esq."

66

37 See Johnson's entry in his Diary: "She knew Pope, and thought him disagreeable."-Boswell by Croker, ed. 1848, p. 462.

3 In Lintot's first Miscellany,' 8vo., 1712. The same 'Miscellany' afterwards enlarged into two volumes, 12mo., and called 'Pope's Miscellany.' 29 Warburton's note on Epistle to Arbuthnot,' v. 193.

Addison's jealousy; for as he could not guess the conduct of the new design, or the possibilities of pleasure comprised in a fiction of which there had been no examples, he might very reasonably and kindly persuade the author to acquiesce in his own prosperity, and forbear an attempt which he considered as an unnecessary hazard. 40

Addison's counsel was happily rejected. Pope foresaw the future efflorescence of imagery then budding in his mind, and resolved to spare no art or industry of cultivation. The soft luxuriance of his fancy was already shooting, and all the gay varieties of diction were ready at his hand to colour and embellish it.

His attempt was justified by its success. "The Rape of the Lock stands forward, in the classes of literature, as the most exquisite example of ludicrous poetry. Berkeley congratulated him upon the display of powers more truly poetical than he had shown before with elegance of description and justness of precepts he had now exhibited boundless fertility of invention.

:

He always considered the intermixture of the machinery with the action as his most successful exertion of poetical art. He indeed could never afterwards produce anything of such unexampled excellence. Those performances which strike with wonder, are combinations of skilful genius with happy casualty; and it is not likely that any felicity, like the discovery of a new race of preternatural agents, should happen twice to the same

man.

Of this poem the author was, I think, allowed to enjoy the praise for a long time without disturbance. Many years afterwards [1728] Dennis published some remarks upon it, with very little force and with no effect; for the opinion of the public was already settled, and it was no longer at the mercy of criticism. About this time he published The Temple of Fame,' 42 which,

6

40 If this is true, Pope fairly balanced the bad counsel of Addison by advising him not to bring Cato' on the stage. (See Warburton's note on verse 215 of 'Imitations of Horace,' B. ii. Ep. 1.)

41 6 The Rape of the Lock,' thus amplified, was first published by Lintot in 8vo., 1714.

42The Temple of Fame' did not appear till 1715.

as he tells Steele in their correspondence, he had written two years before; that is, when he was only twenty-two years old,13 an early time of life for so much learning and so much observation as that work exhibits.

On this poem Dennis afterwards published some remarks,44 of which the most reasonable is, that some of the lines represent Motion as exhibited by Sculpture. 15

45

Of the Epistle from Eloisa to Abelard' I do not know the date.46 His first inclination to attempt a composition of that tender kind arose, as Mr. Savage told me, from his perusal of Prior's Nut-brown Maid.' How much he has surpassed Prior's work it is not necessary to mention, when perhaps it may be said with justice that he has excelled every composition of the same kind. The mixture of religious hope and resignation gives an elevation and dignity to disappointed love, which images merely natural cannot bestow. The gloom of a convent strikes the imagination with far greater force than the solitude of a grove.

This piece was, however, not much his favourite in his latter years, though I never heard upon what principle he slighted it.

In the next year (1713) he published Windsor Forest;' 47 of which part was, as he relates, written at sixteen, about the same time as his Pastorals; and the latter part was added afterwards where the addition begins we are not told. The lines relating to the Peace confess their own date. It is dedicated to Lord Lansdown, who was then high in reputation and

43 Pope's note on Letter to Steele of 16th Nov. 1712. 44 Remarks upon Mr. Pope's Translation of Homer; with two Letters concerning Windsor Forest and the Temple of Fame. By Mr. Dennis. London: printed for E. Curll, in Fleet Street, 1717, 8vo. pp. 92.

45 Dennis idly objected to these lines, because motion cannot be represented in sculpture. But Virgil, in his shield, uses such; but in one instance perhaps he carries it too far:

Mulcere alternos.

Motion may be represented, but not change of motion.-Jos. WARTON: Pope, ed. 1797, ii. 67.

Eloisa to Abelard' was first published in his collected Poems,' 4to. and folio, 1717.

47

'Windsor Forest' was his first publication in folio.