images of Leander, who was drowned in crossing the sea to kiss the hand of fair Hero. This were

a destiny less to be lamented than what we are told of the poor Jew, one of your interpreters, who was beheaded at Belgrade as a spy. I confess such a death would have been a great disappointment to me; and I believe Jacob Tonson will hardly venture to visit you after this news.

You tell me the pleasure of being nearer the sun has a great effect upon your health and spirits. You have turned my affections so far eastward that I could almost be one of his worshippers; for I think the sun has more reason to be proud of raising your spirits than of raising all the plants and ripening all the minerals in the earth. It is my opinion a reasonable man might gladly travel three or four thousand leagues to see your nature and your wit in their full perfection. What may we not expect from a creature that went out the most perfect of this part of the world, and is every day improving by the sun in the other. If you do not now write and speak the finest things imaginable, you must be content to be involved in the same imputation with the rest of the East, and be concluded to have abandoned yourself to extreme effeminacy, laziness, and lewdness of life.

I make not the least question but you could give

me great éclaircissements upon many passages in Homer, since you have been enlightened by the same sun that inspired the Father of Poetry. You are now glowing under the climate that animated him; you may see his images rising more boldly about you in the very scenes of his story and action; you may lay the immortal work on some broken column of a hero's sepulchre, and read the fall of Troy in the shade of a Trojan ruin. But if, to visit the tomb of so many heroes, you have not the heart to pass over that sea where once a lover perished, you may at least, at ease in your own window, contemplate the fields of Asia in such a dim and remote prospect, as you have of Homer in my translation.

I send you therefore, with this, the third volume of the Iliad, and as many other things as fill a wooden box, directed to Mr. Wortley. Among the rest you have all I am worth, - that is, my works; there are few things in them but what you have already seen, except the epistle of Eloisa to Abelard, in which you will find one passage that I cannot tell whether to wish you should understand

or not.

The last I received from your hands was from Peterwaradin; it gave me the joy of thinking you in good health and humor; one or two expres

sions in it are too generous ever to be forgotten by me. I writ a very melancholy one just before, which was sent to Mr. Stanyan, to be forwarded through Hungary. It would have informed you how meanly I thought of the pleasures of Italy without the qualification of your company, and that mere statues and pictures are not more cold to me than I to them. I have had but four of your letters; I have sent several, and wish I knew how many you have received. For God's sake, Madam, send to me as often as you can; in the dependence that there is no man breathing more constantly or more anxiously mindful of you. Tell me that you are well, tell me that your little son is well, tell me that your very dog (if you have one) is well. Defraud me of no one thing that pleases you, for whatever that is, it will please me better than anything else can do.

I am always yours.

This brief note was written to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu after her return from Constantinople, and was one of the last which passed between them.

Pope to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.

I MIGHT be dead, or you in Yorkshire, for anything that I am the better for your being in town.

I have been sick ever since I saw you last, and have now a swelled face, and very bad. Nothing will do me so much good as the sight of dear Lady Mary. When you come this way, let me see you, for indeed I love you.

Lady Mary Pierrepont to Edward Wortley Montagu.

The lively Lady MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU, née Pierrepont, who had been the object of Pope's passion, was hardly twenty when she met Edward Wortley Montagu. They were married after a rather stormy courtship of two years. Her lover seems to have been rather uncertain in his wooing, and the course of their love was troubled from the outset. "When I foolishly fancied," she writes him, "that you loved me, there is no condition of life I could not have been happy in with you. But I will never see you more. If you write, be not displeased if I send it back unopened." And in the very next post she acknowledges a letter from him in such terms as the following.

No date.

I THOUGHT to have returned no answer to your letter, but I find I am not so wise as I thought myself. I cannot forbear fixing my mind a little on that expression, though perhaps the only insincere one in your letter-"I would die to be secure of your heart, though but for a moment." Were this but true, what is there I would not do to secure you?

I can

I will state the case to you as plainly as I can ; and then ask yourself if you use me well. I have showed in every action of my life an esteem for you that at least challenges a grateful regard. I have trusted my reputation in your hands; I have made no scruple of giving you, under my own hand, an assurance of my friendship. After all this, I exact nothing from you. If you find it inconvenient for your affairs to take so small a fortune, I desire you to sacrifice nothing to me. I pretend no tie upon your honour; but in recompense for so clear and so disinterested a proceeding, must I ever receive injuries and ill-usage? I have not the usual pride of my sex. bear being told I am in the wrong, but I must be told gently. Perhaps I have been indiscreet: I came young into the hurry of the world; a great innocence and an undesigning gayety may possibly have been construed coquetry and a desire of being followed, though never meant by me. I cannot answer for the observations that may be made on me. All who are malicious attack the careless and defenceless. I own myself to be both. I know not anything I can say more to show my perfect desire of pleasing you and making you easy, than to proffer to be confined with you in what manner you please. Would any