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right. This vain and fantastic lady is celebrated for her romantic attachment to Congreve, the poet, who left her the greatest part of his fortune, about £10,000,-£7,000 of which she laid out in a diamond necklace. Most of the remainder must have been spent on the magnificent funeral and monument with which she honoured Congreve's remains. The corpse lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, and was interred in the south transept of Westminster Abbey, with great pomp. The pall-bearers were, the Duke of Bridgewater, Lord Cobham, the Earl of Wilmington, the Hon. George Berkeley, and General Churchill. The Duchess next erected a monument to her poet, which bears the following inscription, written by herself:-" Mr. William Congreve, died Jan. the 19th, 1728, aged fifty-six, and was buried near this place; to whose most valuable memory this monument is set up by Henrietta, Duchess of Marlborough, as a mark how deeply she remembers the happiness and honour she enjoyed in the sincere friendship of so worthy and honest a man, whose virtue, candour, and wit, gained him the love and esteem of the present age, and whose writings will be the admiration of the future." It is said that the Duchess had a figure of Congreve made in wax-something like the "effigies" of the nobility which used to be placed in glass-cases in Westminster Abbey, to which she addressed her conversation, placed it at table with her, and treated in all respects as if it had been the veritable "Old Bachelor." The absurdity of the Duchess, and the vanity of Congreve— who had parties having strong claims on his fortune-are well worthy of each other; but whether Henrietta deserved the coarse imputations conveyed in the sketch of Philomedé does not appear. She died childless in 1738.

SARAH, DUCHESS OF MARLBOROUGH.

Ver. 115. But what are these to great Atossa's mind?] There was no mistaking this portrait of Sarah, the old and famous Duchess of Marlborough. Her violent and imperious temper had alienated from her the affection of Queen Anne (though the lady of the bedchamber and the Queen had corresponded for years under the assumed names of Mrs. Morley and Mrs. Freeman, and the former had in reality wielded the powers of sovereignty), and her whole life afterwards, to the age of eighty-four, was a scene of restlessness, turbulence, and intrigue. With nearly all her family she was at open war, and her insolence, her irreligion, and avarice, seemed to increase with her age. Some gleams of talent, an indomitable spirit, and the remains of exquisite beauty, with occasional fits of generosity and affection, relieve this gloomy picture of old age, "joyless and unendeared," and attach a degree of interest to the name and history of the clever termagant Duchess. Pope was personally acquainted with Sarah; he visited her, and corresponded with her. "She makes great court to me," he said to Swift in 1739; and four years afterwards he writes to Lord Marchmont, that there were many hours he would be glad to talk to, or rather to hear, the Duchess of Marlborough. "I would listen to her with the same veneration and belief in all her doctrines as the disciples of Socrates gave to the words of their master,

or he himself to his demon (for I think she too has a devil, whom in civility we will call a genius). I will judge of nothing till I see her." The doctrines of Sarah were startling enough, and she was anxious to retain Pope and Lord Marchmont among her friends, the list of which had been wofully thinned by her own caprice and violence. She evidently stood in awe of Pope's satirical genius, and in some respects his seemingly arrogant boast was realized:

"Yes, I am proud; I must be proud to see

Men not afraid of God, afraid of me."

In her eighty-second year (1742) she writes to Lord Marchmont :

"I am not arrived at so much philosophy as not to think torturing pain an evil; that is the only thing I now dread, for death is unavoidable; and I cannot find that anybody has yet demonstrated whether it is a good thing or a bad one. Pray do not think me wicked in saying this, and if you talk to Mr. Pope of me, endeavour to keep him my friend: for I do firmly believe the immortality of the soul as much as he does, though I am not learned enough to have found out what it is."

About a fortnight afterwards she writes again to Lord Marchmont, acknowledging with evident pleasure the receipt of a letter from his Lordship, with another from Pope, and stating, that if she could in the country receive letters from them, she would never wish to come to town. "In that way of conversing, I should have all the pleasure that I can possibly propose, without the disappointment when Mr. Pope falls asleep, or the dread of your taking leave because you were weary." Again-"I shall always be pleased to see your Lordship and Mr. Pope, when you will be so bountiful as to give me any part of your time." In the same rambling epistle (which she acknowledges to be as long as a Chancery bill) she expatiates on her peculiar doctrines, and her dear friends the philosophers," in whose belief of the transmigration of souls she is disposed to concur, adding sarcastically, "I have a great mind to believe that kings' and first ministers' souls when they die go into chimneysweeps." This original idea of the chimney-sweeps was suggested by an incident in her house, which at that time was undergoing the cleaning process:

"One of the chimney-sweepers was a little boy, a most miserable creature, without shoes, stockings, breeches, or shirt. When it was over, I sent a servant of mine to Windsor with him, to equip this poor creature with what he wanted, which cost very little, not being so well dressed as the late Privy Seal [Lord Hervey]. And as I could not be sure the souls of these chimneysweepers had come from great men, I could not repent of their being so much overpaid as they were."

On the score of over-payment, Sarah should not have been eager to throw the first stone. "Exclusive of Blenheim, of parliamentary grants, of gifts, of marriage portions from the Queen to their daughters, it appears that the fixed yearly income of the Duke, at the height of his favour, was no less than £54,825, and that the Duchess had, in offices and pensions, an additional sum of £9,500."-Lord Mahon's History, vol. 1. In her old age Sarah was the richest commoner in England. Vanbrugh, with whom she waged a bitte

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war about Blenheim, writes:-"He (the Duke of Marlborough) has given his widow-may a Scotch ensign get her!-£10,000 a-year to spoil Blenheim her own way, and £12,000 a-year to keep herself clean, and go to law." To some great men," patriots after her own heart, Sarah could be liberal. Chesterfield got £20,000 from her estate, Pitt, Lord Chatham, £10,000, Marchmont, £2000, &c. She is said to have given Hooke, the historian, £5000 for writing for her the "Apology," or explanation of her public conduct, though the good Nathaniel afterwards lost favour by endeavouring to makeher a Roman Catholic! Fear prompted the £1000 given to Pope, if there were no other condition implied in the gift. Mrs. Ridley, her waiting-woman, had about £70,000. Walpole was highly amused with one provision in her will that no part of the Life of the Duke of Marlborough, intrusted to Glover and Mallet, and for which £1000 was left, should be written in verse. Glover, it is well known, threw up his half of the legacy, while Mallet took the whole, and never wrote a line of the Life.

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Out of the record of Sarah's feuds and ebullitions of temper, some amusing incidents arise. With her grandson, Charles, second son of the Earl of Sunderland, she had a Chancery suit, and appeared in the Court to plead her own cause. Amongst the property in dispute was a famous diamond-hilted sword, given to the great Duke by the Emperor. "That sword," said she, emphatically, to the Court, "that. sword, my lord would have carried to the gates of Paris. Am I to live to see the diamonds picked off one by one, and lodged at the pawnbroker's?" Yet Sarah herself, if we are to believe Swift and Walpole, on receiving from the Queen a picture in enamel, set with diamonds, took off the diamonds, and gave the picture to a Mrs. Higgins, to be sold. The

Earl of Oxford (Harley) purchased it for £100. This was a mark of Sarah's sovereign contempt. One of her grand-daughters, Lady Anne Egerton, had deeply offended her. The grandmother got hold of a portrait of the lady, blackened over the face, and inscribed in large characters on the frame, "She is much blacker within!" Thus, placed in her usual sitting-room, the picture was exhibited to all visitors. "She had still at a great age considerable remains of beauty, most expressive eyes, and the finest hair imaginable, the colour of which she had preserved unchanged by the constant use of honey-water. None of her charms, when they were at their proudest height, had been so fondly prized by the poor Duke, her husband. Therefore, one day, upon his offending her by some act of disobedience to her 'strong sovereign will,' the bright thought occurred, as she sate considering how she could plague him most, that it would be a hearty vexation to see his favourite tresses cut off. Instantly the deed was done; she cropped them short, and laid them in an ante-chamber he must pass through to enter her apartment. But, to her cruel disappointment, he passed, entered, and repassed, calm enough to provoke a saint; neither angry nor sorrowful; seemingly quite unconscious both of his crime and his punishment. Concluding he must have overlooked the hair, she ran to secure it. Lo! it had vanished-and she remained in great perplexity the rest of the day. The next, as he continued silent, and her looking-glass spoke the change a rueful one, she began for once to think she had done rather a foolish thing. Nothing ever transpired upon the subject until after the Duke's death, when she found her beautiful ringlets carefully laid by in a cabinet, where he kept whatever he held most precious: and at this point of the story she regularly fell a-crying.".

It does not appear at what time the Duchess presented Pope with a sum of £1000 to suppress the character of Atossa. Walpole and Warton relate the incident in nearly the same terms. The lines were first shown to her Grace as if they were intended for a portrait of the Duchess of Buckingham ;4 but she soon stopped the person who was reading them to her, and called out aloud, "I cannot be so imposed upon; I see plainly for whom they are designed." She gave Pope £1000 to suppress the portrait, which he accepted, it is said, by the persuasion of Martha Blount; and after the Duchess's death it was printed in a folio sheet, 1746, and then inserted with the characters

3 See the interesting Introductory Anecdotes, contributed by Lady Louisa Stuart to Lord Wharncliffe's edit. of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's Works.

4 "The Duchess of Buckingham was as much elated by owing her birth to James II. (by Catherine Sedley) as the Marlborough (the Duchess) was by the favour of his daughter. She indulged her pompous mind with such shows as were appropriate to her rank. She had made a funeral for her husband as splendid as that of the great Marlborough: she renewed that pageant for her only son, a weak lad, who died under age; and for herself; and prepared and decorated waxen dolls of him and of herself to be exhibited in glass-cases in Westminster Abbey. It was for the procession at her son's burial that she wrote to old Sarah of Marlborough to borrow the triumphal car that had transported the corpse of the Duke. "It carried my lord Marlborough," replied the other, "and shall never be used for anybody else." "I have consulted the undertaker," replied the Buckingham, "and he tells me I may have a finer for twenty pounds!"-Walpole's Reminiscences.

of Philomedé and Chloe, in Warburton's edition of Pope's Works, prepared, and partly printed, before the poet's death. The publication of the Marchmont Papers, in 1831, confirmed this traditionary story, which every admirer of Pope, and every friend to good faith, and independence of character in men of genius, would gladly have seen disproved, and blotted out for ever.

COUNTESS OF SUFFOLK.

Ver. 157. Yet Chloe sure was form'd without a spot.] Henrietta Hobart, daughter of Sir Henry Hobart, married first to the Hon. Charles Howard, afterwards Earl of Suffolk, and secondly to the Hon. George Berkeley. She is best known as Mrs. Howard, lady of the bed-chamber to the princess, afterwards Queen Caroline. No doubt was ever entertained that Mrs. Howard was Pope's "Chloe," and the publication of her correspondence, in 1824, showed how truly the poet had delineated her character. "Though Miss

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Bellenden, one of the maids of honour, bore away the palm of beauty, and her colleague, Miss Lepell, that of grace and wit, Mrs. Howard's good sense, amiability, and sweetness of temper and manners, made her a universal favourite; and it was her singular good fortune to be at once distinguished by her mistress, and beloved by her companions."5 She was also unfortunately distinguished by the prince, afterwards George II., in consequence of which her husband, Mr. Howard, affected great indignation, but was silenced,

5 Mr. Croker's Preface to the Suffolk Correspondence.

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