detected one of those blunders which are called "bulls." 24 The first edition had this line:

"What is this wit

Where wanted, scorned; and envied where acquir'd?” "How," says the critic, "can wit be scorn'd where it is not? Is not this a figure frequently employed in Hibernian land? The person that wants this wit may indeed be scorned, but the scorn shows the honour which the contemner has for wit." this remark Pope made the proper use by correcting the passage.

Of

I have preserved, I think, all that is reasonable in Dennis's criticism; it remains that justice be done to his delicacy. "For his acquaintance (says Dennis) he names Mr. Walsh, who had by no means the qualification which this author reckons absolutely necessary to a critic, it being very certain that he was, like this essayer, a very indifferent poet; he loved to be well dressed; and I remember a little young gentleman whom Mr. Walsh used to take into his company, as a double foil to his person and capacity. Inquire between Sunninghill and Oakingham 25 for a young, short, squab gentleman, the very bow of the God of Love, and tell me whether he be a proper author to make personal reflections? He may extol the ancients, but he has reason to thank the gods that he was born a modern ; for had he been born of Grecian parents, and his father consequently had by law had the absolute disposal of him, his life had been no longer than that of one of his poems, the life of half a day. Let the person of a gentleman of his parts be never so contemptible, his inward man is ten times more ridiculous; it being impossible that his outward form, though it be that of downright monkey, should differ so much from human shape as his unthinking, immaterial part does from human understanding." Thus began the hostility between Pope and Dennis, which, though it was suspended for a short time, never was appeased. Pope seems, at first, to have attacked him

24 I confess it is what the English call a bull in the expression, though the sense be manifest enough.-POPE to Caryl, June 15, 1711.

25 That is, inquire at Binfield.

wantonly; but though he always professed to despise him, he discovers, by mentioning him very often, that he felt his force or his venom.

26

Of this Essay' Pope declared that he did not expect the sale to be quick, because "not one gentleman in sixty, even of liberal education, could understand it." 27 The gentlemen and the education of that time seem to have been of a lower character than they are of this. He mentioned a thousand copies as a numerous impression."

28

Dennis was not his only censurer: the zealous Papists thought the monks treated with too much contempt, and Erasmus too studiously praised; but to these objections he had not much regard.

The Essay' has been translated into French by Hamilton, author of the Comte de Grammont,' whose version was never printed; by Robotham, secretary to the King for Hanover, and by Resnel; and commented by Dr. Warburton, who has discovered in it such order and connection as was not perceived by Addison, nor, as is said, intended by the author.

Almost every poem consisting of precepts is so far arbitrary and immethodical, that many of the paragraphs may change places with no apparent inconvenience; for of two or more positions, depending upon some remote and general principle, there is seldom any cogent reason why one should precede the other. But for the order in which they stand, whatever

*Compare Addison's 'Life,' vol. ii. p. 133.

"Letter to Caryl, July 19, 1711. 'Letters,' 1737, 4to. p. 83.

Old Mr. Lewis, the bookseller in Russell Street, who printed the first edition of this Essay in quarto, without Pope's name, informed me that it lay many days in his shop unnoticed and unread; and that, piqued with this neglect, the author came one day and packed up and directed twenty copies to several great men; among whom he could recollect none but Lord Lansdown and the Duke of Buckingham; and that in consequence of these presents, and his name being known, the book began to be called for.-WARTON: Life of Pope, p. xviii.

A second edition was advertised as ready in The Spectator' of 29th Nov. 1712. The first edition consisted of a thousand copies ('Letter to Caryl,' July 19, 1711; 'Letters,' 1737, 4to. p. 83).

One of these gentlemen himself [Pope] can tell you that his admirable 'Essay on Criticism' lay upon the bookseller's hands for some time.— ARBUTHNOT: Works, i. 110.

it be, a little ingenuity may easily give a reason. "It is possible," says Hooker, "that, by long circumduction from any one truth, all truth may be inferred." Of all homogeneous truths, at least of all truths respecting the same general end, in whatever series they may be produced, a concatenation by intermediate ideas may be formed, such as, when it is once shown, shall appear natural; but if this order be reversed, another mode of connection equally specious may be found or made. Aristotle is praised for naming Fortitude first of the cardinal virtues, as that without which no other virtue can steadily be practised; but he might, with equal propriety, have placed Prudence and Justice before it, since without Prudence Fortitude is mad; without Justice it is mischievous.

As the end of method is perspicuity, that series is sufficiently regular that avoids obscurity; and where there is no obscurity, it will not be difficult to discover method.

6

In The Spectator'29 was published the Messiah,' which he first submitted to the perusal of Steele, and corrected in compliance with his criticisms.

6

It is reasonable to infer from his Letters that the verses on the Unfortunate Lady' were written about the time when his Essay' was published. The lady's name and adventures I have sought with fruitless inquiry.

6

39

I can therefore tell no more than I have learned from Mr. Ruffhead, who writes with the confidence of one who could trust his information.3 She was a woman of eminent rank and large fortune, the ward of an uncle, who, having given her a proper education, expected like other guardians that she should make at least an equal match; and such he proposed to her, but found it rejected in favour of a young gentleman of inferior condition.

Having discovered the correspondence between the two lovers, and finding the young lady determined to abide by her own choice, he supposed that separation might do what can rarely

29 Of May 14, 1712, No. 378.

30 Ruffhead (p. 133 follows the account in Ayre's Life of Pope,' 2 vols. 12mo., 1745, vol. i. p. 75.

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 impatient, 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

32

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

32 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. 4 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.