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of determined character, who did not scruple conveyed away his wife. She was seized in at an act of lawless violence. His forcible the night by a party of Highlanders, and detention of his wife, Lady Grange, for many thenceforth devoted to a secret and dreary years in lonely confinement in the island of imprisonment, from which she only escaped St. Kilda, is a well-known romance in real by her death, more than thirteen years aflife. His letters and diary exhibit a curious terwards. What might have been the fate mixture of theological cant, whining com- of Lady Mar in the hands of this man, he plaints, and unscrupulous designs. For Lady has himself sketched in a curious passage Mar, of whom he knew but little, he did not which he puts into Lady Mary's mouth, in pretend to have, and could not have, any an imaginary conversation between herself particular regard. The motives for his con- and her sister. Quite separated from your duct in the matter are, indeed, fully betrayed father's and mother's friends and from your in his private letters to his relative, Thomas country,' he supposes Lady Mary to say, Erskine of Pittodry, published in the third locked up in Scotland, or foreign parts, volume of the Miscellany of the Spalding and wholly in their [Lord Grange and his Club; from which it clearly appears that it adherents] power, what can you expect? was not the continuance of Lady Mar's mad- Your friends here could give you no relief, ness, so much as the consequences of her re- and you should be wholly at the barbarous covery, which he regarded with dread. If mercy of those whose sense get [gets ?] not Lady M-r continue in her confinement,' he sufficiently the better of their hatred or conwrites, and matters as they are, it is bad tempt as to make them carry with seeming enough; but they may be worse.'-Sup- respect to you till they get you in their posing the sister find her well,' he adds, power. What will they not do when they then may not an artful woman impose on have you?' It is a striking instance of the one in such circumstances, and whose mind recklessness of Pope's satire, that he apcannot yet be very firm ?' What this means pears to have had no authority for his accuis explained by other passages in the same sation but the statements of this man. That letter, in which he shows by elaborate state- Lady Mary ill-used or 'starved' her favorite ments, the importance to his brother and his sister, was a charge not likely to be confamily of obtaining a command over her ac- ceived in the mind of anybody else but tions, particularly as to an arrangement al- Grange, and which no one else had any inready made concerning her property. Were terest in making; and the fact that he apLady M-r, on her freedom, in right hands,' pears to have induced Pope's friend, Dr. he remarks, she would ratify the bargain; Arbuthnot, on one occasion to enter into but if in her sister's, probably she will not. his plans, would certainly point to a channel If while she is in that way Lord M. [Mar] through which Pope might have received comes to die, it is too probable that his this strange statement. Among the papers daughter will fall into the same hands, which is a letter from Mr. Wortley to Lady Mary, would go near to finish the ruin of the fam- written sometime later, in which he recomily. I shall add little more on this head. mends her, for her own ease, to relinquish The expense is uneasy at any rate. If the her charge, and urges upon her that she has lady be got to freedom, and then to the set-done all that any one can think reasonable' tlement we wish, it will cost money; but it is worth it; and if it make not a return in profit, yet it prevents worse.' It may be supposed that Lord Grange, though he made a journey to London on this business, failed to persuade the Lord Chancellor of the justice of his claim to take charge of Lady Mar. All the schemes to which he resorted for obtaining his object proved unavailing; and he at length adopted the characteristic measure of forcibly seizing the unhappy lady, and carrying her to Scotland.

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for her sister's sake-that Lady Frances Erskine, the daughter of Lady Mar, being now almost a woman, ought to choose for herself who should preserve her mother's life;' and that, if she had not the prudence to choose proper persons,' Lady Mary could not be blamed.' Lady Mary appears to have yielded to these arguments, and Lady Frances Erskine thenceforth took charge of her mother. Lady Frances subsequently married her cousin, the son of Lord Grange, and naturally adopted the spirit of her hus"On the road he informs us, she was ar- band's family: but Lady Mar appears to rested by the Lord Chief Justice's warrant, have had no share in their hostility. To the 'procured on false affidavit of her sister last, Lady Mary continued to write to her Lady Mary, etc., and brought back to Lon-occasional letters from Italy, in the hope of don, declared lunatic, and by Lord Chancellor (whose crony is Mr. Wortley, Lady Mary's husband) delivered into the custody of Lady Mary.' It was but in the preceding year that Grange had, in like manner,

their finding her in one of those intervals of recovered reason in which she, on one occasion at least, replied in a letter of kindness and sisterly affection."

On the subject of Lady Mary's intimacy

and subsequent quarrel with Pope very little is known, and not much new information could be expected. We have long been of opinion that their acquaintance before her departure for Constantinople must have been very slight; and Mr. Thomas tells us that there is no mention of him in her letters of that period, though "Garth, Addison, Congreve, and Vanbrugh are spoken of in terms of familiar friendship." There is, indeed, proof in her "Unfinished Sketch that when Oxford had the wand and Anna reigned," she heartily despised him; and

Mr. Thomas observes :

been so mad with the idea of her as to steal

to be married to a respectable gentleman, Pope assures her that she has put him into such a condition that he thinks of nothing and inquires of nothing' but her, that he has her picture,' and that he passes whole days in sitting before it, talking to himself." For Miss Cowper was a wit-that is, a lady of literary talent-and of course would understand the language of wits. The indelicacy with which the spirit of the time permitted him to address even unmarried ladies, is exand to the daughter of his acquaintance, emplified in his letters to the Miss Blounts Mrs. Marriott, of Sturston, to whom he transmitted, apparently through his friend Broome, then rector of Sturston, compositions whose ribaldry and grossness no wit or art could now render tolerable."

"Although to subscribe to Pope's Iliad was then almost a fashion, and a friend, or even acquaintance of the poet, could hardly have neglected to do so, neither the name of Mr. Wortley nor of Lady Mary is to be to women meant nothing; his divinity was Pope's passionate utterances in his letters found in the list prefixed to the first volume, published in June, 1715, though they both she to whom, at the moment, he chanced to subscribed for copies of the Odyssey, Mr. be writing, he was thinking only of the fine Wortley for 5 sets. Of the letters of Pope things he could say. To believe, as some to Lady Mary which have been preserved, persons have professed to do, that there was the earliest was written immediately before an attachment between Pope and Lady Mary her departure for Constantinople, and it is before she went abroad is absurd. She was evident from the circumstances mentioned, that their acquaintance must have been very to a man of her own choice four years, and young, beautiful, and accomplished, married recent; and notwithstanding the extravagant expressions with which he begins at Pope's letters prove only, as we have said, once to address her, could not have had that his passions and professions were mere time to ripen into intimacy." words. His theory is plainly stated in one of his letters to her: "The farther you go Let us be like modest people, who, when from me, the more freely I shall write. . . . they are close together, keep all decorum; but if they step a little aside," etc. Lady Mary was not for a moment deceived.

Pope wrote to Lady Mary as Mons. Rémond and "the wits" of that time only

could write.

"It is hard to conceive [says Mr. Thomas] the degree of passionate declaration, extravagant compliment, and licentious allusion, which a fine lady of that time might receive without damage to her reputation, or any supposition that the writer intended more than to exhibit his own wit and talent for constructing phrases. . . . Pope, though wholly unfitted by nature for the part of a gallant, habitually wrote such letters to his women acquaintance. His letters to Miss Judith Cowper, afterwards Mrs. Madan, the grave and respectable aunt of the poet Cowper, will serve as an instance. Their acquaintance appears to have been of the briefest and slightest kind; to have had, indeed, no foundation but the fact of her having sent him some verses to correct through Mrs. Howard. Pope was then still friendly with Lady Mary, and supposed to be in love with Martha Blount, and he sends copies of his verses addressed to both of those ladies. But, notwithstanding this, and the fact that Miss Judith Cowper was about

"Let it be observed," says Lady Louisa Stuart, "in justice to Lady Mary's taste, that her answers treat this kind of language with tacit contempt. Viewing it probably, with the widow in Hudibras,' as only highheroic fustian,' she returns him a recital of some plain matter of fact, and never takes the smallest notice of protestation or panegyric.”

If any one doubts whether these letters were mere words and phrases, let him look at the very first which Pope addressed to Lady Mary after her arrival,-when, "wit" as he was, he knew he must "keep all decorum "-descend to common sense and respectful manners, and there, after the introductory flourishing of some fifteen lines, he runs off into a minute description of Stanton Harcourt, "a true picture of a genuine ancient country-seat; "a letter which he

might have addressed to his grandmother, strangement began. The last known letter and which, on the evidence of his own from Pope is dated September, 1721; and quarto, of 1737, he did address, in duplicate, in a letter to her sister, written about that to the Duke of Buckingham. The character and degree of their intimacy, two years after her return, may perhaps be judged of by Gay's "Welcome," written in 1720, for Gay knew them both :

"What lady's that to whom he gently bends? Who knows not her? Ah! those are Wortley's eyes!

How art thou honor'd, number'd with her friends,

For she distinguishes the good and wise." It is true that the manuscript fragment in the British Museum reads "Howard" instead of Wortley,-but, until some one shall have discovered a copy of an early edition, we must take the printed text as authority. If it prove erroneous-if we ought to read Howard-the fact would be still more significant for then, in Gay's endless enumeration of Pope's friends, Lady Mary will not have been mentioned.

time, Lady Mary says, "I see sometimes Mr. Congreve, and very seldom Mr. Pope." She had not, indeed, seen his much-talkedabout Grotto, though residing in the same village. On this subject, Mr. Thomas ob

serves:

"It is not difficult to conceive what were

the causes which led to this position of affairs. When Lady Mary first knew Pope, he was indifferent about politics, and suspected of Whig tendencies, only, perhaps because he wrote in conjunction with Steele and Addison, and associated with them; but, in the interval of her absence, he had become an avowed Tory, intimately allied with extreme Tories-Swift, Arbuthnot, Oxford, Atterbury, Bathurst. He had openly quarrelled with and libelled their old and dear friend Addison, and separated himself from Steele and other Whigs; he had become a hater of Whigs in the abstract, although he held on with his neighbor, young Craggs, Some time after their return, Lady Mary and others. Lady Mary and her husband sat for her portrait to Kneller; so did her were always Whigs, but now they were husband, Mr. Wortley; so did her sister Whigs of influence. Their daily associates were Whigs, their intimates were Whigs. Lady Mar; so did most fashionable people. They had become, as most political people Dallaway tells us that Lady Mary sat for this do, less tolerant than in their literary days portrait at the request of Pope. On what of political differences; and Pope must have evidence-what tittle of evidence-did he felt ill at ease when he visited his neighbor make this assertion? Did Pope ever pos--perhaps not always welcome to the host, sess the picture? Dallaway, at least, ought looked on with positive dislike by many, with to have known that the portrait was in the suspicion by all.” possession of her daughter; that it was engraved, with the date of 1720, and prefixed to his own edition, where it is stated to have been engraved "from a picture by Sir Godfrey Kneller, in the collection of the Marquis of Bute." Dallaway, we suppose, was misled by Pope's fine phrasings; and very fine they are. But he was not half so rapturous as when Miss Cowper sat for her portrait; he does not assure Lady Mary that he has been tempted to "steal" the portrait, or that he is so mad with the idea" of her that he "passes whole days in sitting before it, talking to himself."

We come now to the estrangement from, and subsequent quarrel with, Pope. There is no evidence, as we have stated, that Pope had more than a very general acquaintance with the Wortleys before they went abroad; and soon after their return, and after they had taken a house at Twickenham, the es

We

This is true: but is it the whole truth? We, as common men, dealing with the realities of common life, suspect there was as much of bathos as of sentiment in the true story of their alienation. It is impossible to conceive a stronger contrast than between the dashing, brilliant woman of fashion and Pope's mother, the venerable lady of eighty, with his good old nurse, Mary Beach. can imagine them in their little, quiet, sunny home by the river-side—a picture not indeed for the court painter, but for that great though homely artist, Izaak Walton. When Mr. Wortley first resided at Twickenham it was in a furnished house, and that means a house wanting in every thing. The Wortleys, too, were themselves just then wanting ing money; he was not the rich man he afterwards became. Both husband and wife had been dabbling in South-Sea stock, the wife unknown to her husband; and she was,

ingenious and elaborate than they were likely to have been if really written in an inn at Dover, after a sea passage in November, and in answer to a letter this minute received.'. . . But if it would have been offensive to write it at the moment, to fabricate it afterwards, and to insert it in the copy of the collection which Lady Louisa Stuart informs us was circulated among her friends, was an offence still more unpardonable. The piquancy of the poem could not have failed to attract attention, or the whole

scure allusions to "lampoons," previously circulated by the lady. From that moment there was no peace, and the genius of Pope and the popularity of his satires must have made life itself hateful to her. This might explain why she went abroad; but we have other, and we think sufficient, reasons.

It would not be very extraordinary if incompatibility of temper alone were urged as the apology for a man and his wife living matter to come quickly to the ears of Pope. separate; but the separation of Mr. WortHis letter containing the story of the Lovers ley and Lady Mary, temporary probably in struck by Lightning, with his epitaph upon intention, was full of malicious suggestions them, was a composition which he appears to the young and brilliant Horace Walpole, to have regarded with a peculiar pride, for who hated them both, because the husband he addressed copies of it only slightly va- was the open opponent of his father, a fact ried to several of his friends. He was, never forgiven by Horace, and the wife therefore, little likely to relish the ridicule cast upon his somewhat exaggerated senti- spoke slightingly at least of his mother. We ment, or the amusement which the friends doubt whether, at any moment of his life, of Lady Mary derived from the spectacle of Mr. Wortley was a loving and affectionate his supposed humiliation. Pope revelled in husband. So far as we can fathom his charthe vulgar attacks made upon him by small acter, he appears to have been a man of critics and poor poets, and dexterously shrewd good sense, upright and honorable, turned them to the advantage of his own but of a mean and penurious nature, which renown. But to be beaten by a woman after his father's death, and when the poswith his own weapons, and with no more

expenditure of labor or pains than might be sible million of which he died possessed bestowed in a chance minute snatched dur-loomed in the distance, became an all-abing a journey at an inn; to be represented sorbing passion. In the eyes of the "wits," as laughed out of countenance, and out of Lady Mary was remarkably mean; in the 'all his fine sentimentalism and artificial eyes of her husband she was extravagant. moralizings, in the presence of an audience He was constantly absent, looking after his who enjoyed his discomfiture, was an offence estates in Yorkshire and Durham, and above which Pope's sensitive and spiteful nature

could not easily forgive. It was with Lady all, his great coal-fields, while she was left Mary too common a practice to exercise in London. For many years she had sufher wit at the expense of friends, and to be fered from ill health; and about 1737, or afterwards surprised at their resentment, 1738, she became painfully disfigured by for us to wonder at the simplicity with an eruption which shut her out from all which, if these suppositions be correct, she but very friendly society, which continued induced persons to inquire what was the

cause of his ill-will. Pope would naturally through life, and sent her to the grave with

avoid the confession that her satire had a cancer.

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We are convinced that there was

wounded him; but the offence appears to a taint of disease in the blood of the Pierrereveal itself in his allusions to her as that ponts. Her sister Gower died young; her dangerous thing, a female wit,' as one who sister Mar was for years a lunatic; her son, had too much wit' for him; and particu- it is charitable to believe, was never in his larly in his note to the Dunciad, declaring senses; and Lady Mary may have been that the offensive passage which had been supposed to refer to Lady Mary, was in- saved by that terrible outbreak from like affliction-if indeed she did altogether estended to apply to all' bragging travellers.'' cape, of which we have some doubts. But however blessed it may have been in its consequences, it was not the less terrible to bear. Long after, she wrote to her daughter, "It is eleven years since I saw my figure [French for face] in the glass, and the last reflection I saw there was so disagreeable that I resolved to spare myself

The quarrel soon after broke out; Swift arrived on a visit to Pope in the spring of 1726. Swift hated Lady Mary-Lady Mary, we are told, "abhorred the very name of Dean Swift." Swift, as far as we know, opened the attack with the Capon's Tale, which however contains in itself some ob