do me hurt, by crossing his desires, rather than fail of meeting you. Had I imagined you would have left me without finishing, I had not seen you. Now you have been so free before Mrs. Steele-[the "dear Prue" of Mr. afterwards Sir Richard, Steele]-you may call upon her, or send for her to-morrow or next day. Let her dine with you, or go to visit shops, Hyde Park, or other diversions. You may bring her home, I can be in the house, reading, as I often am, though the master is abroad. If you will have her visit you first, I will get her to go to-morrow. I think a man, or a woman, is under no engagement till the writings are sealed; but it looks like indiscretion even to begin a treaty without a probability of concluding it. When you hear of all my objections to you, and to myself, you will resolve against Last night you were much upon the reserve; see you can never be thoroughly intimate with me; 'tis because you have no pleasure in it. You can be easy, and complaisant, as you have sometimes told me; but never think that enough to make me easy, unless you refuse me.

me.

I

If I

"Write a line this evening, or early to-morrow. don't speak plain, do you understand what I write? Tell me how to mend the style, if the fault is in that. If the characters are not plain, I can easily mend them. I always comprehend your expressions, but would give a great deal to know what passes in your heart.

"In you I might possess youth, beauty, and all things that can charm. It is possible that they may strike me

less, after a time; but I may then consider I have once enjoyed them in perfection; that they would have decayed as soon in any other. You see this is not your case. You will think you might have been happier. Never engage with a man, unless you propose to yourself the highest satisfaction from him and none other."

There is evidently a throb of genuine feeling in this letter, though its tone is not altogether pleasant, and we cannot conceive of it as written by a Christian gentleman to a Christian gentlewoman. The writer's waywardness, we had almost said churlishness, of disposition may well have awakened in Lady Mary's mind some misgivings as to her future happiness.

Meanwhile, affairs at home remained in statu quo. The Marquis persisted in his opposition to a son-in-law who might cut off his grandson with a shilling; Lady Mary in her refusal of a suitor for whom she did not entertain the slightest esteem. The father was indignant at her presumption in daring to choose for herself, and coldly informed her that unless she dismissed Mr. Wortley, he should cut her off with a shilling. She then expressed a resolve to live and die unmarried; but this vow of virginity the Marquis met by an intimation that he should immediately exile her to some remote residence, and that at his death she would receive only a very moderate annuity. In the Georgian days fathers were unaccustomed to filial disobedience, or at least were not wont to yield to it; and believing that she would ultimately surrender, the Marquis began the necessary preparations

for her marriage. The day was fixed; the wedding clothes were purchased; the settlements were drawn up; when the comedy was abruptly converted into a farce by the sudden elopement of Lady Mary with Mr. Montagu. They were privately married by special license on the 12th of August, 1712.

CHAPTER IV.

SOME MINOR LITERARY LIGHTS.

R

KATHARINE PHILIPS-LETITIA PILKINGTON

ELIZABETH ROWE.

KATHARINE PHILIPS.

EADERS of the later poetry of the seventeenth

century will have come upon frequent panegyrical allusions to a certain "Orinda," whose brilliant acquirements, if these writers might be believed, would have entitled her to immortality as the tenth Muse. Thus, Cowley, whom we should be inclined to respect as a critic, exclaims :

"Of female poets who had names of old,
Nothing is shown, but only told,
And all we hear of them perhaps may be
Male flattery only and male poetry.

Few minutes did their beauty's lightning waste,

The thunder of their voice did longer last,

But that too soon was past.

The certain proofs of our Orinda's wit

In her own lasting characters are writ,

And they will long my praise of them survive,
Tho' long perhaps too that may live."

As if this were altogether unsatisfactory and inadequate as a tribute of praise, he writes

"Orinda does our boasted sex outdo,

Not in wit only, but in virtue too."

The Earl of Roscommon, in his "Essay on Poetry," writes with much keenness of perception and delicacy of discrimination. Well, he, too, in his prologue to "Orinda's" translation of Corneille's "Pompée," breaks out into raptures :—

"But you, bright nymph, give Cæsar leave to woo
The greatest wonder of the world but you,
And hear a Muse, who has that hero taught
To speak as gen'rously as e'er he fought :
Whom eloquence from such a theme deters
All tongues but English, and all pens but hers.

By the just Fates your sex is doubly blest,—

You conquered Cæsar, and you praise him best."

And again, in some stanzas " after Horace," he is seized with an equal rapture of laudation :

66 While, ruled by a resistless fire,

Our great Orinda I admire,

The hungry wolves, that see me stray

Unarmed and single, run away.

"Set me in the remotest place

That ever Neptune did embrace,

When there her image fills my breast,

Helicon is not half so blest.

"Leave me upon some Libyan plain,
So she my fancy entertain,
And when the thirsty monsters meet,
They'll all pay homage at my feet.