should be) by six poor men of the village, to whom were given suits of dark grey cloth, and followed by six poor women in the same sort of mourning. A large obelisk to the memory of his revered parent was erected by Pope in the upper part of his grounds,14 in a retired spot, encircled with a plantation of evergreens, yews, and cedars, and on the pedestal was inscribed,— AH EDITHA! MATRVM OPTIMA! MULIERVM AMANTISSIMA! VALE! The epistle to Lord Cobham, which now forms the first of the Moral Essays, was the poet's next production. The subject is, "of the knowledge and characters of men," and the author continues and enforces his theory of the ruling passion which he had laid down in his Essay on Man. Some of his illustrations are, as usual, happy and forcible; and most readers will remember the sketch of Wharton, "the scorn and wonder of our days," and the dying vanity of Mrs. Oldfield the actress : One would not, sure, be frightened when one's dead,— Pope was at Lord Bathurst's in September, 1733, and he wrote from thence to Martha Blount,-"You cannot think how melancholy this place makes me. Every part of this wood puts into my mind poor Mr. Gay, with whom I passed once a great deal of pleasant time in it, and another friend, who is near dead, and quite lost to us, Dr. Swift. I really can find no enjoyment in the place; the same sort of uneasiness as I find at Twickenham whenever I pass my mother's "There 14 This obelisk survived the destruction of most of the other poetical embellishments of the grounds, but disappeared some years since. had been a talk of removing it to Hampton Court, but it is now in Lord Howe's possession, and in the ground of his country seat."-Athenæum, Jan. 9, 1847. POPE'S LETTER TO LORD HERVEY. 219 room." In the same letter he observes; "Life, after the first warm heats are over, is all down hill: and one almost wishes the journey's end, provided we were sure but to lie down easy whenever the night shall overtake us." This consummation the poet attained. His death was singularly calm and easy, divested of all gloom and terror. The year 1733 was closed by a reply to Lord Hervey and Lady Mary, addressed to the former, and entitled, "A Letter to a Noble Lord, on occasion of some Libels, written and propagated at Court, in the year 1732-3." This letter is dated November 30, 1733, and, according to Warburton, was printed in that year. Its publication was threatened in the following advertisement : : Whereas, a great demand hath been made for an Answer to a certain scurrilous Epistle from a Nobleman to Dr. Sh-r-n (Rev. Dr. Sherwin); this is to acquaint the public, that it hath been hitherto hindered by what seemed a denial of that Epistle by the Noble Lord in the Daily Courant of Nov. 22, affirming that no such Epistle was written by him. But whereas that declaration hath since been undeclared by the Courant, this is to certify, that unless the said Noble Lord shall this next week, in a manner as public as the injury, deny the said poem to be his, or contradict the aspersions therein contained, there will, with all speed, be published a most proper reply to the same. 1733. No disavowal or retractation, so far as we can learn, was made by Lord Hervey; yet Pope suppressed his letter. He writes to Swift, Jan. 6th, 1734:-" There is a woman's war declared against me by a certain Lord. His weapons are the same which women and children use; a pin to scratch and a squirt to bespatter. I writ a sort of answer, but was ashamed to enter the lists with him, and after showing it to some people suppressed it; otherwise, it was such as was worthy of him and worthy of me." Horace Walpole says the letter was suppressed by desire of his uncle, (old Horace Walpole,) who had got an Abbey from Cardinal Fleury, for one Southcote, a friend of Pope's. "My Lord Hervey," adds Walpole, "pretended not to thank him."15 Pope's habitual caution must have come in support of the recommendation. As Vice-Chamberlain, Hervey was a favourite at Court and enjoyed the confidence of the Queen, as well as that of the Minister; and the publication of the letter would have given deep offence to all these royal and official personages, and to many others with whom its author wished to stand well. It might even have led to an action at law, and brought the poet under the cognizance of Judge Page, who was included in the same poem with the Vice-Chamberlain. Pope took a safer and severer retaliation; he reserved Lord Hervey for another poetical invective, and consigned him, under the name of Sporus, to everlasting ridicule and contempt. Johnson considered that the prose reply exhibited nothing but tedious malignity. It is, however, a short and by no means heavy production. The bitterness of the sarcasm is conspicuous enough, and the marks of studied and careful preparation are obvious. Every scandal and insinuation made against Lord Hervey, by Pulteney and other political opponents, is introduced in the form of inuendo or explanation; the old arrows are barbed afresh and dexterously pointed; and the letter wants only a little more compression, and less visible straining after effect, to rival the invectives of Junius. As a defence it is poor. Pope committed the same capital blunder he had done in his former replies. The case was another of the poetica fraudes: I never heard (he said) of the least displeasure you had conceived against me, till I was told that an imitation I had made of Horace bad offended some persons, and among them your Lordship. I could not have apprehended that a few general strokes about a Lord scribbling carelessly, a pimp, or a spy at court, a sharper in a gilded chariot, &c., that these, I say, should be ever applied as they have been, by any malice but that which is the greatest in the world, the malice of ill people to themselves. 15 Walpole to George Montague, June 13, 1751. It was in this year, 1751, that Pope's Letter was first published, being included in Warburton's edition of the poet's works. HE DENIES HAVING SATIRISED LADY MARY. 221 Your Lordship so well knows (and the whole court and town through your means so well know), how far the resentment was carried upon that imagination, not only in the nature of the libel you propagated against me, but in the extraordinary manner, place, and presence in which it was propagated; that I shall only say, it seemed to me to exceed the bounds of justice, common sense, and decency. I wonder yet more, how a lady, of great wit, beauty, and fame for her poetry, (between whom and your Lordship there is a natural, a just, and a well-grounded esteem,) could be prevailed upon to take a part in that proceeding. Your resentments against me indeed might be equal, as my offence to you both was the same; for neither had I the least misunderstanding with that lady till after I was the author of my own misfortune in discontinuing her acquaintance. I may venture to own a truth, which cannot be unpleasing to either of you; I assure you my reason for so doing, was merely that you had both too much wit for me; and that I could not do, with mine, many things which you could with yours. The injury done you in withdrawing myself could be but small, if the value you had for me was no greater than you have been pleased since to profess. He stoutly denied having ever designated Lady Mary by the name of Sappho : In regard to the Right Honourable Lady, your Lordship's friend, I was far from designing a person of her condition by a name so derogatory to her, as that of Sappho; a name prostituted to every infamous creature that ever wrote verse or novels. I protest I never applied that name to her in any verse of mine, public or private; and (I firmly believe) not in any letter or conversation. Whoever could invent a falsehood to support an accusation, I pity; and whoever can believe such a character to be theirs, pity still more. God forbid the court or town should have the complaisance to join in that opinion! Certainly I meant it only of such modern Sapphos, as imitate much more the lewdness than the genius of the ancient one. This denial the poet was afterwards willing to forget, and Sappho was repeatedly alluded to in reference to Lady Mary. Lord Hervey had revived the old scandal of the poet's "undertaking" the Odyssey, And sold Broome's labours printed with Pope's name. This charge he meets with a distinct and clear refutation : How can you talk (my most worthy Lord) of all Pope's works as so many libels, affirm that he has no invention but in defamation, and charge him with selling another man's labours printed with his own name? Fie, my Lord, you forget yourself. He printed not his name before a line of the person's you mention; that person himself has told you and all the world in the book itself, what part he had in it, as may be seen at the conclusion of his notes to the Odyssey. I can only suppose your Lordship (not having at that time forgot your Greek) despised to look upon the translation; and ever since entertained too mean an opinion of the translator to cast an eye upon it. Besides, my Lord, when you said he sold another man's works, you ought in justice to have added that he bought them, which very much alters the case. What he gave him was five hundred pounds: his receipt can be produced to your Lordship: I dare not affirm that he was as well paid as some writers (much his inferiors) have been since; but your Lordship will reflect that I am no man of quality, either to buy or sell scribbling so high: and that I have neither place, pension, nor power to reward for secret services. It cannot be, that one of your rank can have the least envy to such an author as I: but were that possible, it were much better gratified by employing not your own, but some of those low and ignoble pens to do you this mean office. I dare engage you will have them for less than I gave Mr. Broome, if your friends have not raised the market. Let them drive the bargain for you, my Lord; and you may depend on seeing, every day in the week, as many (and now and then as pretty) verses as these of your Lordship. ARBUTHNOT. The spirit, which dictated the suppressed letter soon blazed forth in the most animated and energetic of Pope's epistles that addressed to Dr. Arbuthnot, and which the poet has termed, a "sort of bill of complaint," drawn upat different times, but specially designed to rebut the aspersions of Lord Hervey. The two most perfect and |