by all the crew; every one is officious, every one making applications, every one offering his services, the whole bustle of the place seems to be only for him. The same man going from the water side, no noise made about him, no creature takes notice of him, all let him pass with utter neglect! The picture of a minister when he comes into power, and when he goes out. [We find by the Letter to Dr. Atterbury, dated July 27, 1722, that the Duchess of Buckinghamshire would have engaged Mr. Pope to draw her husband's character. But, though he refused this office, yet in his Epistle On the Character of Women, these lines, To heirs unknown descends th' unguarded store, are supposed to mark her out in such a manner as not to be mistaken for another; and having said of himself that he held a lie in prose and verse to be the same, all this together gave a handle to his enemies, since his death, to publish the following paper, (intitled, The Character of Katherine, &c.,) as written by him. On which account (in vindication of the deceased poet) we have subjoined to it a letter to a friend, that will let the reader fully into the history of the writing and publication of this extraordinary CHARACTER.] Warburton. * These two lines are in the character of Atossa, who was the Duchess of Marlborough, and not Buckinghamshire. Warton. THE CHARACTER OF KATHERINE, LATE DUCHESS OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE AND NORMANBY. BY THE LATE MR. POPE. SHE was the daughter of James the Second, and of the Countess of Dorchester, who inherited the integrity and virtue of her father with happier fortune. She was married first to James, earl of Anglesey; and secondly, to John Sheffield, duke of Buckinghamshire and Normanby; with the former she exercised the virtues of patience and suffering, as long as there were any hopes of doing good by either; with the latter all other conjugal virtues. The man of finest sense and sharpest discernment she had the happiness to please, and in that found her only pleasure. When he died, it seemed as if his spirit was only breathed into her, to fulfil what he had begun, to perform what he had concerted, and to preserve and watch over what he had left, his only son; in the care of whose health, the forming of whose mind, and the improvement of whose fortune, she acted with the conduct and sense of the father, softened, but not |