one place, that she was the fame lady on whom the Duke of Buckingham wrote his fong, entitled, "To a Lady retiring to a Convent." The verfes prove that she was nobly allied; and as the Duke of Buckingham was a man very far from exemplary in his moral character, it is probable that an intimacy might have existed between them, and on her he might have written his Dialogue between an "Elderly Swain and a young Shepherdefs." The story which was told to Condorcet by Voltaire, and by Condorcet to a gentleman of high birth and character, from whom I received it, is this:“ That her attachment was not to Pope, or to any Englishman of inferior degree;" but to a young French Prince of the blood royal, Charles Emmanuel Duke of Berry, whom, in early youth, fhe had met at the court of France. In 1710, if we give this date to the Elegy, the Duke of Berry must have been in his twenty-fourth year, being born 1686. The verses certainly feem unintelligible, unless they allude to fome connexion, to which her highest hopes, though nobly connected herself, could not afpire. What other sense can be given to these words? "Why bade ye elfe, ye powers, her foul aspire She She was herself of a noble family, or there can be no meaning in the line, "That once had honour, virtue, titles, fame." Under the idea here fuggefted, a greater propriety is given to the verfe, which otherwise appears so tame and common place, " "Tis all thou art, and all the PROUD shall be." It fufficiently appears from Pope's letter, that fhe was of a wild and romantic difpofition. She left her friends and country, and commenced a fentimental pursuit after the object in which her ambition and enthusiastic caprice had centered. Having alienated her relations by her wayward conduct, and being difappointed in the hopes the had formed, fhe retired voluntarily to a convent. Warton afferts that he was "forced" into a nunnery. This is exprefsly contrary to what Pope himfelf fays, in a letter to her: "If you are refolved in re σε venge to rob the world of so much example as you may afford it, I believe your defign to be in vain; "for, in a monaftery, your devotions cannot carry you "fo far towards the next world, as to make this lofe fight of you." Part of this letter, as it ftands in Curll's edition, Pope in his acknowledged edition has fuppressed; it is fin gular, VOL. I. * It is said, her name was Winsberry. b gular, that it conveys an idea very nearly of what has been before mentioned. The paffage which Pope, on fecond thoughts, fuppreffed,is this After the words (" paft its power to injure them,") add, "Therefore if you take it into favour upon its again repentance, and continue in it, you would be fo far from leading what is commonly called an unfettled life, (or what you with too much unjust severity call a vagabond life,) that the wife would only look upon you as a prince in progrefs, who travels to gain the affections he has not," &c. However this may be, her fate at leaft is well known, and it is most probable that incipient lunacy was the cause of her perverted feelings, and untimely end. The fame year (1711) he produced the poem, which at once placed him higher than any modern writer, and exceeded every thing of the kind that had appeared in the republic of letters. In the Rape of the Lock, to the mellifluence which distinguished his pastorals, to the "carminis artem," (the moft confummate fkill of verfification in its kind,) he added what might before have been denied to him, the powers of the happiest INVENTION: here were no images and fentiments borrowed and diluted, if I may fo fay, from Virgil: all was new and fanciful. He ftood upon his own ground; and whilft he placed at an immenfe distance those who had before fucceeded in the Mock-Heroic, (Boileau and Garth,) claimed the highest praise the most fuccessful poet could boaft: for the machinery (it matters not from what source taken) was fo appropriate, fo beautifully interwoven, and fo poetical, that the fhafts of Dennis, when he afterwards attacked it, fevere and acute as he was, dropt impotent. 1 Let me be here indulged in fpeaking fomewhat more particularly of this extraordinary man. At the time of the first appearance of Pope as a poet, he had long been confidered as the most learned critic of the age. In his youth he had affociated with the first characters, particularly Congreve, &c. He had corresponded once with Dryden, who seems to bear the most willing teftimony to his acquirements and talents. Even after the declared hoftility of Pope, those who moft favoured the cause of the rifing bard, did not fpeak with difrefpect of the veteran critic. Dennis, no doubt, confidered, that the ground which the young candidate for fame had gained, himself lost ; and an additional fting was, therefore, given to his feverity. The Rape of the Lock appeared firft in two books, without the machinery of the Sylphs. When this was fo fuccefsfully added, Dennis wrote fome obfervations, which however he forbore to publish at the time. It may be proper here to mention, the cause why they appeared fo long afterwards. In 1721, Dennis growing old and diftreffed, published his correfpondence with different eminent characters, by fubfcription. b 2 scription. Pope, fearful of his resentment, became a subscriber, and sent him the following Letter: "SIR, May 3, 1721. "I called to receive the two books of your letters from Mr. Congreve, and have left with him the little money I was in your debt. I look upon myself to be much more fo, for the omiffions you have been pleafed to make in these letters in my favour, and SINCERELY JOIN WITH You in the defire, that not the LEAST TRACES may remain of that difference between us, which indeed I am SORRY FOR. You may therefore believe me, without either ceremony or falfeness, SIR, &c. Yet, after this proteftation, without "A. POPE." fresh pro any vocation from Dennis, he introduced him into the Dunciad. The criticifm Dennis had written on the Rape of the Lock was not published till this unmerited and wanton attack. I have thought it neceffary to mention the circumstance in this place; and as Johnson has given an extract from the Criticism on " the Effay," perhaps the reader will not be displeased to hear something of what was advanced by the formidable affailant against the Sylphs. "The machines which appear in this poem, are "infinitely less confiderable than the human perfonages, which is without precedent. Nothing can ' "be fo contemptible as the perfons, or fo foolish as "the |