POPE ADMIRED BY A YOUNG LADY IN A STAGE COACH.

"The morning after I parted from you, I found myself (as I had prophecy'd) all alone, in an uneasy stage coach; a doleful change from that agreeable company I enjoyed the night before! without the least hope of entertainment, but from my last resource in such cases—a book. I then began to enter into an acquaintance with the moralists, and had just received from them some cold consolation for the inconvenience of this life and the uncertainty of human affairs, when I perceived my vehicle to stop, and heard from the side of it the dreadful news of a sick woman preparing to enter it. "Tis not easy to guess at my mortification; but being so well fortified with philosophy I stood resigned, with a stoical constancy, to endure the worst of evils-a sick woman. I was, indeed, a little comforted to find by her voice and dress that she was a gentlewoman; but no sooner was her hood removed, but I saw one of the most beautiful faces I ever beheld; and to increase my surprise, I heard her salute me by my name. I never had more reason to accuse nature for making me short-sighted than now, when I could not recollect I had ever seen those fair eyes which knew me so well, and was utterly at a loss how to address myself; till, with a great deal of simplicity and innocence, she let me know (even before I discovered my ignorance) that she was the daughter of one in our neighbourhood, lately married, who having been consulting her physicians in town, was returning into the country, to try what good air and a new husband could do to recover her. My father, you must know, has sometimes recommended the study of physic to me; but I never had any ambition to be a doctor till this instant. I ventured to prescribe some fruit (which I happened to have in the coach), which being forbidden her by her doctors, she had the more inclination to; in short, I tempted her, and she ate; nor was I more like the devil, than she like 'Eve.' Having the good success of the aforesaid gentleman before my eyes, I put on the

gallantry of the old serpent, and in spite of my evil form, accosted her with all the gaiety I was master of, which had so good effect, that in less than an hour she grew pleasant, her colour returned, and she was pleased to say my prescription had wrought an immediate cure; in a word, I had the pleasantest journey imaginable."

We learn from this passage, by the way, that Pope's father sometimes expressed his wish to see his son a physician. The son, however, wisely avoided a profession which would have severely tried his health, and not very well have suited his personal appearance. Otherwise, there can be no doubt he would have made an excellent member of the faculty, learned, bland, sympathetic, and entertaining.

The passage we shall extract next is better known, but we give it because Maids of Honour are again flourishing. The poet is here again at his ease with the fair sex. The "prince, with all his ladies on horseback," is George II., then Prince of Wales, who is thus seen compelling his wife's maids of honour to ride out with him whether their mistress went or not, and to go hunting 66 over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks!" The case is otherwise now; and the lovely Margaret Dillons, and Spring Rices, and Listers, have the luck to follow a gentlewoman instead of a brute. They can also go in carriages instead of on horseback, when they prefer it. Whether they have not still, however, occasionally to undergo that dreadful catas

trophe," a red mark in the forehead from an uneasy hat," may be made a question.

POPE DINING AND WALKING BY MOONLIGHT WITH MAIDS OF

HONOUR.

"I went by water to Hampton Court, unattended by all but my own virtues, which were not of so modest a nature as to keep themselves or me concealed; for I met the prince with all his ladies on horseback coming from hunting. Mrs. B (Bellenden) and Mrs. L- (Lepell) took me into protection (contrary to the laws against harbouring papists), and gave me a dinner, with something I liked better-an opportunity of conversation with Mrs. H— (Howard, afterwards Lady Suffolk). We all agreed that the life of a maid of honour was of all things the most miserable; and wished that every woman who envied had a specimen of it. To eat Westphalia ham in a morning, ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come home in the heat of the day with a fever, and (what is worse a hundred times) with a red mark in the forehead from an uneasy hat; all this may qualify them to make excellent wives for fox-hunters, and bear abundance of ruddy-complexioned children. As soon as they can wipe off the sweat of the day, they must simper an hour, and catch cold in the princess's apartment; from thence (as Shakspeare has it) "to dinner with what appetite they may;" and after that, till midnight, walk, work, or think, which they please. I can easily believe no lone house in Wales, with a mountain and rookery, is more contemplative than this court; and as a proof of it, I need only tell you, Mrs. L- walked all alone with me three or four hours by moonlight; and we met no creature of any quality

* The old title of Mistress, applied to unmarried ladies, was then still struggling with that of Miss; each was occasionally given.

but the king, who gave audience to the vice-chamberlain, all alone, under the garden-wall."

We hope Lady Mary Wortley saw this letter; for she was jealous of the witty and beautiful Lepell, who married a flame of hers, Lord Hervey; and though she is understood to have scorned the pretensions of Pope herself, it is in the nature of dispositions like hers not to witness pretensions paid even to the rejected without a pang.

Our closing extract will mount the little immortal, in his turn, upon an eminence, on which he is certainly very seldom contemplated in the thoughts of any body; and yet it was a masculine one to which he appears to have been accustomed; to-wit, horseback. He rides in the present instance from Binfield to Oxford, a distance of thirty miles, no mean one for his delicate frame. In a subsequent letter we find him taking the like journey and to the same place, in company with Lintott the bookseller, of whose overweening manners, and "eye," meanwhile, "to business," he gives a very amusing account, not omitting an intimation that he was the better rider, and did not at all suffer under the bookseller's cockney inexperience. But we prefer to see him journeying by himself. There is a sweet and poetical thoughtfulness in the passage, betwixt ease and solemnity.

POPE JOURNEYING ON HORSEBACK BY MOONLIGHT.

"Nothing could have more of that melancholy which once used to please me than my last day's journey; for after having passed through my favourite woods in the forest, with a thou

sand reveries of past pleasure, I rode over hanging hills, whose tops were edged with groves, and whose feet watered with winding rivers, listening to the falls of cataracts below, and the murmuring of the winds above; the gloomy verdure of Stonor succeeded to these, and then the shades of the evening overtook me. The moon rose in the clearest sky I ever saw, by whose solemn light I paced on slowly without company, or any interruption to the range of my thoughts. About a mile before I reached Oxford, all the bells tolled in different notes, and the clocks of every college answered one another, and sounded forth, some in a deeper, some in a softer tone, that it was eleven at night. All this was no ill preparation to the life I have led since, among those old walls, venerable galleries, stone porticos, studious walks, and solitary scenes of the university. I wanted nothing but a black gown and a salary, to be as mere a bookworm as any there. I conformed myself to the college hourswas rolled up in books-lay in one of the most ancient dusky parts of the university-and was as dead to the world as any hermit of the desert. If anything was alive or awake in me, it was a little vanity, such as even those good men used to entertain when the monks of their own order extolled their piety and abstraction; for I found myself received with a sort of respect which this idle part of mankind, the learned, pay to their species, who are as considerable here as the busy, the gay, and the ambitious are in your world."

In the letter containing this extract, is one of those touching passages we have mentioned, in which he alludes to his personal deformity.

"Here, at my Lord H-'s (Harcourt's ?), I see a creature nearer an angel than a woman (though a woman be very near as good as an angel). I think you have formerly heard me mention Mrs. T as a credit to the maker of angels; she is a relation of his lordship's, and he gravely proposed her to me