bad poets (e. g. Kirke White) have been better men, but very few of the good ones. -BIRRELL, AUGUSTINE, 1889, Noticeable Books, The Nineteenth Century, vol. 26, p. 988.

The poor man's life was as weak and crooked as his frail, tormented body, but he had a dauntless spirit, and he fought his way against odds that might well have appalled a stronger nature. I suppose I must own that he was from time to time a snob, and from time to time a liar, but I believe that he loved the truth, and would have liked always to respect himself if he could. He violently revolted, now and again, from abasement to which he forced himself, and he always bit the heel, that trod on him, especially if it was a very high, narrow heel, with a clocked stocking and a hooped skirt above it. I loved him fondly at one time, and afterwards despised him, but now I am not sorry for the love, and I am very sorry for the despite. HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN, 1895, My Literary Passions, p. 51.

LADY MARY

To say that he had any right to make love to her is one thing; yet to believe that her manners, and cast of character, as well as the nature of the times, and of the circles in which she moved, had given no license, no encouragement, no pardoning hope to the presumption, is impossible; and to trample in this way upon the whole miserable body of his vanity and humility, upon all which the consciousness of acceptability and glory among his fellow-creatures, had given to sustain himself, and all which in so poor, and fragile, and dwarfed, and degrading a shape, required so much to be so sustained;-assuredly it was inexcusable, it was inhuman. . She had every advantage on her side: could not even this induce her to put a little more heart and consideration into her repulse? Oh, Lady Mary! A duke's daughter wert thou, and a beauty, and a wit, and a very triumphant and flattered personage, and covered with glory as with lute-string and diamonds; and yet false measure didst thou take of thy superiority, and didst not see how small thou becamest in the comparison when thou didst thus, with laughing cheeks, trample under foot the poor little immortal!-HUNT, LEIGH, 1847, Men, Women and Books, vol. II, p. 196.

The friendship with Pope, conspicuous in the letters written during the embassy, is an unfortunate episode in the life of Lady Mary. All the stories which have gained credence, to the injury of her reputation, are probably due to his subsequent quarrel with her, the hatred and unscrupulousness with which he pursued her, and his fatal power of circulating scandalous insinuations. It is certain that the tenor of her life up to the period of her quarrel with Pope, was wholly unlike that career of profligacy which has been popularly attributed to her since the publication of Pope's Satires and the Letters of Horace Walpole who, it must be remembered, wrote after Pope's celebrated attacks; and it is no less certain that, on a careful investigation, not one of the charges brought against her will be found to rest on any evidence.-THOMAS, W. MOY, 1861, ed., Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Memoir, vol. I, p. 21.

Why Pope and Lady Mary quarreled is a question on which much discussion has been expended, and on which a judicious German professor might even now compose an interesting and exhaustive monograph. A curt English critic will be more apt to ask why they should not have quarreled. We know that Pope quarreled with almost every one: we know that Lady Mary quarreled or half quarreled with most of her acquaintances: why then should they not have quarreled with one another? It is certain that they were very intimate at one time; for Pope wrote to her some of the most pompous letters of compliment in the language. And the more intimate they were to begin with, the more sure they were to be enemies in the end. We only know

that there was a sudden coolness or quarrel between them, and that it was the beginning of a long and bitter hatred. In their own times Pope's sensitive disposition probably gave Lady Mary a great advantage, her tongue perhaps gave him more pain than his pen gave her; but in later times she has fared the worse. BAGEHOT, WALTER, 1862-89, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Works, ed. Morgan, vol. I, pp. 377, 379.

The stroke, when it came, was delivered on the most sensitive part of the poet's nature. It is quite unnecessary to suppose

that he was passionately in love with Lady Mary. The "declarations" which he is constantly making to her in his letters, he made, with as much sincerity, and almost in identical words, to Judith Cowper and Martha Blount; and, in using language of this kind, he was only conforming with the gallantry fashionable in his age.

He calls himself in one of his poems the "most thinking rake alive." His love-making was like his description of Stanton-Harcourt, purely ideal, but his vanity and his artistic sensibility were so strong that he was vexed when he was not believed to be in earnest. To have the declaration of his elaborate passion received with laughter, must have been a rude shock to his vanity, and his acute self-consciousness would have no doubt associated Lady Mary's behaviour with his own physical defects. After all his well-considered expressions of devotion, after the exquisite lines in which he had connected her name with his grotto, ridicule was the refinement of torture. It humiliated him in his own esteem, and the recollection of the light mockery, with which she had always met his heroics, added to his sense of insult and injury. These considerations, though they help us to understand the condition of Pope's feelings, afford no excuse whatever for the character of his satire on Lady Mary.

ELWIN, WHITWELL AND COURTHOPE, WILLIAM JOHN, 1881, ed., The Works of Alexander Pope, vol. III, p. 282.

An incident occurred in connection with this picture that is worth recording, as showing the way artists are sometimes treated by their so-called-patrons. A collector, of a somewhat vulgar type, had long desired me to paint a picture for him. I showed him the sketch, and, to prove the culture of the gentleman, I may mention the following fact: "What's the subject?" said he. "Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Pope," said I; "the point taken is when Pope makes love to the lady, who was married at the time, and she laughed at him." "The pope make love to a married woman-horrible!” "No, no, not the pope-Pope the poet!" "Well, it don't matter who it was; he shouldn't make love to a married woman, and she done quite right in laughing at him; and if I had been her husband I should" etc. "Very well," said I,

"as you don't like the subject, we will say no more about it. I will paint you something else." "Oh, no," was the reply; "I like to see a woman laugh at a man who makes an ass of himself. I'll take it. What's the figure?"-FRITH, W. P., 1888, My Autobiography and Reminiscences, vol. 1, p. 155.

MARTHA BLOUNT

Patty Blount was red-faced, fat, and by no means pretty. Mr. Walpole remembered her walking to Mr. Bethell's, in Arlington Street, after Pope's death, with her petticoats tucked up like a sempstress. She was the decided mistress of Pope, yet visited by respectable people.-MALONE, EDMUND, 1792, Maloniana, From Horace Walpole, ed. Prior, p. 437.

He was never indifferent to female society; and though his good sense prevented him, conscious of so many personal infirmities, from marrying, yet he felt the want of that sort of reciprocal tenderness and confidence in a female, to whom he might freely communicate his thoughts, and on whom, in sickness and infirmity, he could rely. All this Martha Blount became to him; by degrees, she became identified with his existence. She partook of his disappointments, his vexations, and his comforts. Wherever he went, his cor

respondence with her was never remitted; and when the warmth of gallantry was over, the cherished idea of kindness and regard remained.-BOWLES, WILLIAM LISLE, 1806, ed. Pope's Works, vol. 1.

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.-JAMESON, ANNA BROWNELL, 1829, The Loves of the Poets, vol. II, p. 285.

Johnson repeats a story that Martha neglected Pope "with shameful unkindness," in his later years. It is clearly exaggerated or quite unfounded. At any rate, the poor sickly man, in his premature and childless old age, looked up to her with fond affection, and left to her nearly the whole of his fortune. His biographers have indulged in discussions -surely superfluous as to the morality of the connexion. There is no question of seduction, or of tampering with the affections of an innocent woman. Pope was but too clearly disqualified from acting the part of Lothario. There was not in his case any Vanessa to give a tragic turn to the connexion, which otherwise resembled Swift's connexion with Stella. Miss Blount, from all that appears was quite capable of taking care of herself, and, had she wished for marriage, need only have intimated her commands to her lover. It is probable enough that the relations between them led to very unpleasant scenes in her family; but she did not suffer otherwise in accepting Pope's attentions. The probability seems to be that the friendship had become imperceptibly closer, and that what begun as an idle affectation of gallantry was slowly changed into a devoted attachment, but not until Pope's health was so broken that marriage would then, if not always, have appeared to be a mockery.-STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1880, Alexander Pope (English Men of Letters). Miss Blount retained her place in the fashionable world after Pope's death. She lived at last in Berkeley Row, by Hanover Square, and there Swinburne the traveller, her relative, visited her (Roscoe, i, 581 note). He found her a little, neat, fair, prim old woman, easy and gay in her manners. By her will she left the residue of her property to her "dear nephew," Michael Blount, of Mapledurham. She died in 1762, aged 72.-HUMPHREYS, JENNETT, 1886, Dictionary of National Biography, vol. v, p. 249.

ODE TO SOLITUDE

The first of our author's compositions now extant in print, is an "Ode on Solitude," written before he was twelve years old: Which, consider'd as the

production of so early an age, is a perfect. masterpiece; nor need he have been ashamed of it, had it been written in the meridian of his genius. While it breathes the most delicate spirit of poetry, it at the same time demonstrates his love of solitude, and the rational pleasures which attend the retreats of a contented country life.-CIBBER, THEOPHILUS, 1753, Lives of the Poets, vol. v, p. 221.

The close of the seventeenth century forever shut the eyes of John Dryden upon the clouded and fluctuating daylight of our sublunary world. It may have been in the same year, that a solitary boy, then twelve years old, wrote five stanzas which any man might have been glad to have written and which you have by heart-an "Ode to Solitude,"-conspicuous in the annals of English poetry as the dawn-gleam of a new sun that was presently to arise, and to fill the region that Dryden had left.-WILSON, JOHN, 1845, Dryden and Pope, Blackwood's Magazine, vol. 57, p. 379.

Pope never wrote more agreeable or well-tuned verses than this interesting effusion of his boyhood. Indeed there is an intimation of sweetness and variety in the versification, which was not borne out afterwards by his boasted smoothness: nor can we help thinking, that had the author of the "Ode on Solitude" arisen in less artificial times, he would have turned out to be a still finer poet than he was. But the reputation which he easily acquired for wit and criticism, the recent fame of Dryden, and perhaps even his little warped and fragile person, tempted him to accept such power over his contemporaries as he could soonest realize. It is observable that Pope never repeated the form of verse in which this poem is written. It might have reminded him of a musical feeling he had lost.--HUNT, LEIGH, 1849, A Book for a Corner.

The Odes written by Pope are decidedly of an inferior caste. I need not say how inferior to the immortal "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day," by Dryden, who preceded

or how inferior to Gray or Campbell, who have followed him. The Ode, perhaps, of every species of poetical composition, was the most alien to the genius of Pope.-CARLISLE, GEORGE WILLIAM FREDERICK HOWARD, EARL, 1851-62, Lectures and Addresses, p. 15.

PASTORALS 1709

The author seems to have a particular genius for this kind of poetry, and a judgment that much exceeds his years. He has taken very freely from the ancients. But what he has mixed of his own with theirs is no way inferior to what he has taken from them. It is not flattery at all to say that Virgil had written nothing so good at his age. His preface is very judicious and learned.-WALSH, WILLIAM, 1705? Letter to William Wycherley, April 20.

He shall bring with him, if you will, a young poet, newly inspired in the neighbourhood of Cooper's Hill, whom he and Walsh have taken under their wing. His name is Pope. He is not above seventeen or eighteen years of age, and promises miracles. If he goes on as he has begun in the Pastoral way, as Virgil first tried his strength, we may hope to see English poetry vie with the Roman, and this swan of Windsor sing as sweetly as the Mantuan. -GRANVILLE, GEORGE (LORD LANSDOWNE), 1706? Letters, Works of LordLansdowne, vol. II, p. 113.

I have lately seen a pastoral of yours in Mr. Walsh's and Congreve's hands, which is extremely fine, and is generally approved of by the best judges in poetry. I remember I have formerly seen you at my shop, and am sorry I did not improve my acquaintance with you. If you design your poem for the press, no person shall be more careful in printing it, nor no one can give a greater encouragement to it.-TONSON, JACOB, 1706, Letter to Mr. Pope, April 20.

Young, yet judicious; in your verse are found

Art strength'ning nature, sense improved by sound.

-WYCHERLEY, WILLIAM, 1709, To My Friend Mr. Pope, On his Pastorals.

Neither Mr. Pope's nor Mr. Philips's pastorals, do any great honour to the English poetry. Mr. Pope's were composed in his youth; which may be an apology for other faults, but cannot well excuse the barrenness that appears in them. They are written in remarkably smooth and flowing numbers, and this is their chief merit; for there is scarcely any thought in them which can be called his own; scarcely any description, or any image of nature, which has the marks of

being original, or copied from nature herself; but a repetition of the common images that are to be found in Virgil, and in all poets who write of rural themes.BLAIR, HUGH, 1783, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, ed. Mills, Lecture xxxix.

To

It is somewhat strange that in the pastorals of a young poet there should not be found a single rural image that is new; but this, I am afraid, is the case in the Pastorals before us. The ideas of Theocritus, Virgil, and Spenser are, indeed, here exhibited in language equally mellifluous and pure; but the descriptions and sentiments are trite and common. this assertion, formerly made, Dr. Johnson answered, "that no invention was intended." He, therefore, allows the fact and the charge. It is a confession of the very fault imputed to them. There ought to have been invention. It has been my fortune from my way of life, to have seen many compositions of youths of sixteen years old, far beyond these Pastorals in point of genius and imagination, though not perhaps of correctness. Their excellence, indeed, might be owing to having had such a predecessor as Pope.-WARTON, JOSEPH, 1797, ed. Pope's Works.

Warton's observations are very just, but he does not seem sufficiently to discriminate between the softness of individual lines, which is the chief merit of these Pastorals, and the general harmony of poetic numbers. Let it, however, be always remembered, that Pope gave the first idea of mellifluence, and produced a softer and sweeter cadence than before belonged to the English couplet. Dr. Johnson thinks it will be in vain, after Pope, to endeavour to improve the English versification, and that it is now carried to the ne plus ultra of excellence. This is an opinion the validity of which I must be permitted to doubt. Pope certainly gave a more correct and finished tone to the English versification, but he sometimes wanted a variety of pause, and his nice precision of every line prevented, in a few instances, a more musical flow of modulated passages. But we are to consider what he did, not what might be done, and surely there cannot be two opinions respecting his improvement of the couplet though it does not follow that his general rhythm has no imperfection. Johnson

seems to have depreciated, or to have been ignorant of, the metrical powers of some writers prior to Pope. His ear seems to have been caught chiefly by Dryden, and as Pope's versification was more equably (couplet with couplet being considered, not passage with passage) connected than Dryden's, he thought therefore that nothing could be added to Pope's versification. I should think it the extreme of arrogance and folly to make my own ear the criterion of music; but I cannot help thinking that Dryden, and of later days, Cowper, are much more harmonious in their general versification than Pope. I ought also to mention a neglected poem, not neglected on account of its versification, but on account of its title and subject-Prior's "Solomon." Whoever candidly compares these writers together, unless his ear be habituated to a certain recurrence of pauses precisely at the end of a line, will not (though he will give the highest praise for compactness, skill, precision, and force, to the undivided couplets of Pope, separately considered)-will not, I think, assent to the position, that in versification "what he found brickwork he left marble." I am not afraid to own, that with the exception of the "Epistle to Abelard," as musical as it is pathetic, the verses of Pope want variety, and on this account in some instances they want both force and harmony. In variety, and variety only, let it be remembered, I think Pope deficient.-BOWLES, WILLIAM LISLE, 1806, ed. Pope's Works.

There is no evidence, except the poet's own assertion, to prove that the Pastorals were composed at the age of sixteen. They had been seen by Walsh before April 20, 1705, if any dependence could be placed upon the letter of that date which he wrote to Wycherley, when returning the manuscript, but the letter rests on the authority of Pope alone, and there is reason to question the correctness of the date. .

Whatever may be the true date of the Pastorals, a portion of them certainly existed before April 20, 1706.-ELWIN, WHITWELL, 1871, ed., The Works of Alexander Pope, Pastorals, vol. I, pp. 240-41.

The Pastorals have been seriously criticised; but they are, in truth, mere schoolboy exercises; they represent nothing more than so many experiments in

versification. The pastoral form has doubtless been used in earlier hands to embody true poetic feeling; but in Pope's time it had become hopelessly threadbare. The fine gentlemen in wigs and laced coats amused themselves by writing about nymphs and "conscious swains," by way of asserting their claims to elegance of taste.

Pope,

as a boy, took the matter seriously, and always retained a natural fondness for a juvenile performance upon which he had expended great labour, and which was the chief proof of his extreme precocity. He invites attention to his own merits, and claims especially the virtue of propriety. He does not, he tells us, like some other people, make his roses and daffodils bloom in the same season, and cause his nightingales to sing in November; and he takes particular credit for having remembered that there were no wolves in England, and having accordingly excised a passage in which Alexis prophesied that those animals would grow milder as they listened to the strains of his favourite nymph. When a man has got so far as to bring to England all the pagan deities, and rival shepherds contending for bowls and lambs in alternate strophes, these niceties seem a little out of place. We may agree with Johnson that Pope performing upon a pastoral pipe is rather a ludicrous person, but for mere practice even nonsense verses have been found useful.STEPHEN, LESLIE, 1880, Alexander Pope, (English Men of Letters), pp. 23, 24.

I fell in love with Pope, whose life I read with an ardor of sympathy which I am afraid he hardly merited. I was of his side in all his quarrels, as far as I understood them, and if I did not understand them I was of his side anyway. When I found he was a Catholic I was almost ready to abjure the Protestant religion for his sake; but I perceived that this was not necessary when I came to know that most of his friends were Protestants. If the truth must be told, I did not like his best things at first, but long remained chiefly attached to his rubbishing pastorals, which I was perpetually imitating, with whole apparatus of swains and shepherdesses, purling brooks, enameled meads, rolling years, and the like.

I could not imitate Pope without imitating his methods, and his method. was to the last degree intelligent. He