[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 overcome, with the tenderness of the mother. Her understanding was such as must have made a figure, had it been in a man; but the modesty of her sex threw a veil over its lustre, which nevertheless suppressed only the expression, not the exertion of it; for her sense was not superior to her resolution, which, when once she was in the right, preserved her from making it only a transition to the wrong, the frequent weakness even of the best women. She often followed wise counsel, but sometimes went before it, always with success. She was possessed of a spirit, which assisted her to get the better of those accidents which admitted of any redress, and enabled her to support outwardly, with decency and dignity, those which admitted of none; yet melted inwardly, through almost her whole life, at a succession of melancholy and affecting objects, the loss of all her children, the misfortunes of relations and friends, public and private, and the death of those who were dearest to her. Her heart was as compassionate as it was great: her affections warm even to solicitude: her friendship not violent or jealous, but rational and persevering: her gratitude equal and constant to the living; to the dead boundless and heroical. What person soever she found worthy of her esteem, she would not give up for any power on earth; and the greatest on earth whom she could not esteem, obtained from her no farther tribute than decency. Her goodwill was wholly directed by merit, not by acci |