1712. The last piece (the idea of which was taken from Chaucer's House of Fame) was writ ten in 1710. About 1712 we may date the production of the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, whose story is still involved in a cloud of mystery, which the efforts of Pope's biographers have been unable to dispel. Her sad tale, as related by Ruffhead, does not altogether accord with the statements in the poem. He informs us that "she was supposed to have entertained a partiality for a young gentleman of inferior degree, which occasioned her, to refuse a match which her guardian proposed to her: "1 but the poem certainly leads us to conclude that her lover was of a rank superior to her own. "The uncle," he continues, "finding her affections so rooted that she had not power to withdraw them, forced her abroad:"2 but we do not gather this from the poem; and from the following passage in a letter of Pope (n. d.) supposed to be addressed to his lady, it appears that her departure from her country was voluntary. "But, if you are resolved, in revenge, to rob the world of so much example as you may afford it, I believe your design will be vain; for even in a monastery, your devotions cannot carry you so far towards the next world as to make this lose the sight of you; but you will be like a star, that while it is 1 Life of Pope, p. 134. 2 Id. Ibid. fixed in heaven, shines over all the earth. Wheresoever Providence shall dispose of the most valuable thing I know, I shall ever follow you with my sincerest wishes; and my best thoughts will be perpetually waiting upon you, when you never hear of me nor them. Your own guardian angels cannot be more constant, nor more silent. I beg you will never cease to think me your friend, that you may not be guilty of that, which you never yet knew to commit, an injustice." A short correspondence concerning her which passed between our author and Craggs in May, 1712, also makes it manifest that her retirement to the Continent was of her own accord. On her story Pope maintained great reserve: in 1717, Mr. Caryll asks him in two different letters who "the Unfortunate Lady" was? but no answer to the question is to be found in their correspond"After many and wide inquiries," says Warton, in a note on the poem, "I have been informed that her name was Wainsbury;1 and that (which is a singular circumstance) she was as ill-shaped and deformed as our author. Her death was not by a sword, but what would less bear to be told poetically, she hanged herself." In the Elegy, however, she is spoken of as remarkable for beauty. Mr. Bowles—after observing that Pope hints in one place that she was the ence. 1 She is called "Mrs. W-" in Pope's Correspondence. same lady on whom the Duke of Buckingham wrote his song [he means copy of verses] entitled, To a Lady retiring to a Convent, which proves that she was nobly allied; and that as the Duke was far from exemplary in his moral character, it is probable that an intimacy might have existed between them,—proceeds thus: "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, she 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 in 1686. The verses certainly seem unintelligible, unless they allude to some connection, to which her highest hopes, though nobly connected herself, could not aspire. What other sense can be given to these words? "Why bade ye else, ye powers, her soul aspire Ambition first sprung from your bright abodes, 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 suggested, a greater propriety is given to the verse, which otherwise appears so lame and commonplace, "'Tis all thou art, and all the proud shall be." 1 Windsor Forest, and the Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, were published in 1713. The greater part of the former poem was written in 1704; and it was now given to the world at the express desire of Lord Lansdowne, which the motto non injussa cano was intended to show.2 For Addison's Cato Pope furnished a most beautiful prologue, which shared with the tragedy the admiration of the public. The extraordinary success of Cato is well known: it was played for thirty-five successive nights in London, and was acted at Oxford and elsewhere in the provinces. Describing its first representation, in a letter to Sir William Trumbull, April 30, 1713, Pope says: "The numerous and violent claps of the whig party on the one side of the theatre, were echoed back by the tories on the other; while the author sweated behind the scenes with concern, to find their applause proceeding more from the hand than the head. This was the case too of the Prologue writer, who was clapped into a staunch whig at almost every two lines." On the publication of a very acute but abusive 1 Bowles's Life of Pope, p. xxxii. pamphlet by Dennis, entitled, Remarks upon Cato, Pope, thinking that he should gratify Addison by attacking this savage critic, drew up a highly humorous piece, called The Narrative of Dr. Robert Norris of the Frenzy of J. D. That Addison, however, was by no means pleased with Pope's interference, is shown by a letter which Steele, at Addison's request, addressed to Lintot, the publisher of The Narrative: "August 4, 1713. 66 MR. LINTOT, "MR. ADDISON desired me to tell you, he wholly disapproves the manner of treating Mr. Dennis in a little pamphlet by way of Dr. Norris's account. When he thinks fit to take notice of Mr. Dennis's objections to his writings, he will do it in a way Mr. Dennis shall have no just reason to complain of; but when the papers above mentioned were offered to be communicated to him, he said he could not, either in honour or conscience, be privy to such a treatment, and was sorry to hear of it. I am, Sir, your very humble servant. "RICHARD STEELE." A passage, in the Preface to Dennis's Remarks on the Rape of the Lock, charges Pope with the basest double dealing in this business. "In the height of his professions of friendship for Mr. Addison, he [Pope] could not bear the success of |