elaborate verse and prose for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; but that passion probably came to a climax in an impertinence and was extinguished by a box on the ear, or some such rebuff, and he began on a sudden to hate her with a fervour much more genuine than that of his love had been. It was a feeble, puny grimace of love, and paltering with passion. After Mr. Pope had sent off one of his fine compositions to Lady Mary, he made a second draft from the rough copy, and favoured some other friend with it. He was so charmed with the letter of Gay's, that I have just quoted, that he had copied that and amended it, and sent it to Lady Mary as his own. A gentleman who writes letters à deux fins, and after having poured out his heart to the beloved, serves up the same dish rechauffé to a friend, is not very much in earnest about his loves, however much he may be in his piques and vanities when his impertinence gets its due.
But, save that unlucky part of the Pope Correspondence, I do not know, in the range of our literature, volumes more delightful.[1] You live in them in the
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MR. POPE TO THE REV. MR. BROOME, FULHAM, NORFOLK.
"Aug. 29th, 1730."Dear Sir,—
"I intended to write to you on this melancholy subject, the death of Mr. Fenton, before yours came, but stayed to have informed myself and you of the circumstances of it. All I hear is, that he felt a gradual decay, though so early in life, and was declining for five or six months. It was not, as I apprehended, the gout in his stomach, but, I believe, rather a complication first of gross humours, as he was
