thrown by one glance of yours than by all the wicked poets can write in an age; as has been too dearly experienced by the wickedest of them all, that is to say, by, Madam,

Your most obedient, etc.

Pope to Teresa Blount.

BATH, 1714.

You are to understand, Madam, that my passion for your fair self and sister has been divided with the most wonderful regularity in the world. Even from my infancy I have been in love with one after the other of you, week by week, and my journey to Bath fell out in the three hundred and seventy-sixth week of the reign of my sovereign Lady Sylvia. At the present writing hereof it is the three hundred and eighty-ninth week of the reign of your most serene majesty, in whose service I was listed some weeks before I beheld your sister. This information will account for my writing to either of you hereafter, as either shall happen to be queen-regent at that time.

Pray tell your sister all the good qualities and virtuous inclinations she has, never gave me so much pleasure in her conversation as that one vice of her obstinacy will give me mortification this.

month. Radcliff commands her to the Bath, and she refuses. Indeed, if I were in Berkshire, I should honour her for this obstinacy, and magnify her no less for disobedience than we do the Barcelonians. But people change with the change of places (as we see of late), and virtues become vices when they cease to be for one's interest, with me, as with others.

Yet let me tell her she will never look so finely while she is upon earth as she would here in the water. It is not here as in most other instances; for those ladies that would please extremely, must go out of their own element. She does not make half so good a figure on horseback as Christina, Queen of Sweden; but were she once seen in the Bath, no man would part with her for the best mermaid in Christendom. You know I have seen you often; I perfectly know how you look in black and white, I have experienced the utmost you can do in colours; but all your movements, all your graceful steps, deserve not half the glory you might here attain of a moving and easy behaviour in buckram — something between swimming and walking, free enough and more modestly half-naked than you can appear anywhere else. You have conquered enough already by land; show your ambition and vanquish also by water.

I could tell you a delightful story of Dr. P., but want room to display it in all its shining circumstances. He had heard it was an excellent cure for love to kiss the aunt of the person beloved, who is generally of years and experience enough to damp the fiercest flame; he tried this course in his passion, and kissed Mrs. E- - at Mr. D's, but he says it will not do, and that he loves you as much as ever.

Your, &c.

Pope to Martha Blount.

1714.

MOST DIVINE, -It is some proof of my sincerity toward you that I write when I am prepared by drinking to speak truth; and sure a letter after twelve at night must abound with that noble ingredient. That heart must have abundance of flames which is at once warmed by wine and you. Wine awakens and refreshes the lurking passions of the mind, as varnish does the colours that are sunk in a picture, and brings them out in all their natural glowings. My good qualities have been so frozen and locked up in a dull constitution at all my former sober hours, that it is very astonishing to me, now I am drunk, to find so much virtue in me.

In these overflowings

of my heart I pay you my thanks for those two obliging letters you favoured me with, of the 18th and 24th instant. That which begins with "My charming Mr. Pope," was a delight to me beyond all expression: you have at last entirely gained the conquest over your fair sister. It is true you are not handsome, for you are a woman, and think you are not; but this good-humour and tenderness for me has a charm that cannot be resisted. That face must needs be irresistible which was adorned with smiles, even when it could not see the coronation. I do suppose you will not show this epistle out of vanity, as I doubt not your sister does all I write to her. Indeed, to correspond with Mr. Pope may make any one proud who lives under a dejection of heart in the country. Every one values Mr. Pope, but every one for a different reason: one for his adherence to the Catholic faith, another for his neglect of Popish superstition; one for his grave behaviour, another for his whimsicalness; Mr. Titcomb for his pretty atheistical jests, Mr. Caryll for his moral and Christian sentences; Mrs. Teresa for his reflections on Mrs. Patty, and Mrs. Patty for his reflections on Mrs. Teresa.

Your most faithful admirer, friend,

servant, anything, &c.

The Same to the Same.

CIRENCESTER, no date.

Ir is a true saying that misfortunes alone prove one's friendship; they show us not only that of other people for us, but our own for them. We hardly know ourselves any otherwise. I feel my being forced to this Bath journey as a misfortune; and to follow my own welfare, preferably to those I love, is indeed a new thing to me - my health has not usually got the better of my tendernesses and affections. I set out with a heavy heart, wishing I had done this thing the last season, for every day I defer it, the more I am in danger of that accident which I dread the most

my mother's death (especially should it hap

pen while I am away). And another reflection pains me, that I have never, since I knew you, been so long separated from you as I now must be. Methinks we live to be more and more strangers, and every year teaches you to live without me. This absence may, I fear, make my return less welcome and less wanted to you than once it seemed even after but a fortnight. Time ought not in reason to diminish friendship when it confirms the truth of it by experience.

The journey has a good deal disordered me,