which was already excellent. Sensible advice, though often given, is rarely followed, and this is sometimes a matter for congratulation. So it was in this case. Mr. Pope, always suspicious, attributed this dissuasion to jealousy of his fame on the part of Addison-which is absurd. Pope took the risk of spoiling his poem, and transformed a very clever piece of vers de société into a masterpiece which stands alone in our literature. Nay, we may endorse the still stronger statement of De Quincey, that "the Rape of the Lock' is the most exquisite monument of playful fancy that universal literature offers." In this enlarged form, with the addition of the sylphs, salamanders, and gnomes, the Rape of the Lock' was reprinted in 1714, with a dedication to Mrs. Arabella Fermor. In this the poet declares that it was intended only "to divert a few young ladies," and tells Miss Fermor that "an imperfect copy having been offered to a bookseller, you had the good-nature, for my sake, to consent to the publication of one more correct." The inevitableness of publicity attached to most of Mr. Pope's productions, and even extended to his private correspondence. The dedication to Arabella Fermor is clever, but it is clear from it that he did not think her education had been carried to the point of erudition, and he apologises for the use of "hard words" and "difficult terms." More important is the avowal he makes that all the incidents are imaginary except the central one of the rape of the lock. This pacified the fair. In Belinda, then, we have Arabella Fermor, the Baron is Lord Petre, Thalestris Mrs. Morley, and Sir Plume, her brother, Sir George

Brown. The poet did not reconcile the hero and

heroine of his poem. Each married-some one else.

Arabella became the wife of Mr. Francis Perkins, of Ufton Court. Pope sent her a letter of congratulation on her marriage in 1714. She died, a widow, in 1738. Lord Petre's career was brief. The quarrel with Belinda happened apparently in 1711; in the following year he married Catharine, sister and heir of Francis Walmsley, of Dukenhalgh, in Lancashire. He died of small-pox within thirteen months of his marriage. Robert James, eighth Lord Petre, was his posthumous child. The widow remarried, became Lady Stourton, and lived to be eighty-eight years old.

Pope frankly acknowledged that he had taken the supernatural machinery from Le Comte de Gabalis.' That remarkable book first appeared at Paris in 1670, and caused a sensation.* There was no name on the title-page, but it came to be known that the author was the Abbé N. de Montfaucon de Villars. He was born near Toulouse in 1635, and came to Paris in 1667. He had some popularity as a preacher, but his inclination to literature led him to abandon the pulpit. Certainly the Comte de Gabalis' is remarkable as the production of a man bearing an ecclesiastical title. This book is very rare, and his other writings have passed into oblivion. They included a kind of parody of the interminable romances then fashionable, a criticism on Racine and Corneille, which had the approval of

*My own copy has the following title:- Le Comte de Gabalis; ou Entretiens sur les Sciences Secretes. Renouvellé et augmenté d'une lettre sur ce sujet. . . . A Cologne chez Pierre Marteau 12mo, pp. 161.'

6

Madame de Sevigné, and some controversial and philosophical writings. The Comte de Gabalis' is written in the form of a dialogue, in which one of the speakers professes to unveil the cabalistic secrets of the Rosicrucians. The story of the temptation and fall of Eve is told in a fashion which must have shocked all orthodox sentiment. The fragments of mythology are equally absurd. Thus Vesta is declared to be the wife of Noah, and the mother of Zoroaster! The main interest of the book is in the sylphs who are spirits of air, salamanders, creatures of fire, the gnomes who guard the treasures of the earth, and the ondiens or nymphs of the waters. With the women of these elemental races the Rosicrucian adepts enter into marital relations, and the union gives to these supernatural creatures the greatly coveted gift of immortality. There was an outery against the book. satire

What he intended for

was taken seriously, and the Comte de Gabalis,' with a continuation which claimed to be written by Villars, but which did not appear until forty-two years after his death, and a further continuation by Père Antoine Androl, have been translated and privately printed in recent years in this country for the edification of students of the occult. The Abbé Villars came to an unfortunate end. He was assassinated on the Lyons road in 1673. It is curious to note that the opening sentence of Le Comte de Gabalis' refers to the violent deaths of those who tamper with the secrets of the Rosicrucian

sages.

If Pope's "light militia of the air" were not the sole creation of the poet, still less were they the off

spring of Villars' fancy, if we may credit those who occupy themselves in recording the obscure writings of forgotten authors.

assure us that Villars - Italian book entitled

For these annalists of oblivion

took his material from an La Chiave del Gabinetto del

Cavagliere Gioseppe Francesco Borri.' A difficulty which has not occurred to the critics arises from the fact that whilst the French book appeared in 1670 the Italian was not printed until 1681.* until 1681.* But the matter of it may very well have been circulated in MS., and this appears not improbable when the composition of the Chiave' is examined. It does not profess to be written by Borri as a whole, but is a dialogue, often not very complimentary to him, in which ten letters, said to be written by him, are introduced. These letters form the bulk of the book. The first two letters relate to the creatures of the Elements; from the third to the ninth are occupied with alchemy and kindred "secrets," and the tenth is on the soul of brutes. There can be no doubt as to the identity of the earlier part of this book and of the Comte de Gabalis.' Borri, by whom the letters are said to have been written in 1666, was one of those clever charlatans from whom no century appears to be exempt, although the particular fashion in which they enchain their dupes may vary with the ages. Gioseppe Francesco Borri was born at Milan in 1627, and after a somewhat turbulent youth

* La Chiave del Gabinetto del Cavagliere Gioseppe Francesco Borri, Milanese. Col favor della quale si vedono varie Lettere scientifiche, chimiche e curiosissime con varie Istruzioni Politiche, ed altre cose degne di curiosità, e molti segreti bellissimi. Aggiun tavi una Relazione esatta della sua vita. In Colonia appo Pietro del Martello, MDCLXXXI, 12mo, pp. [xxii,] 383.

claimed to have a divine mission for the reorganisation of Christendom. All the world was to be one kingdom, of which the Pope was to be supreme ruler, with Borri for his lieutenant. St. Michael had given him a sword, and he had also seen in the heavens a miraculous vision of a luminous palm. His theological doctrines were of a heterodox character, and included the presence of the Virgin in the Eucharist. He was condemned by the Inquisition and escaped the scaffold by flight. He wandered in Italy, Germany, and Holland. At Hamburg he came into relations with Queen Christina of Sweden, and is said to have received a considerable sum of money from that bizarre lady in the expectation that he would discover, for her profit, the philosopher's stone by which all meaner metals are transmuted into gold.

There is a pathetic monotony about these stories. There is always some unlucky accident which robs the adept of the fruit of his toil. From Hamburg he went to Copenhagen, where he enjoyed the favour of Frederic III. On the death of the king in 1620 he decided to go to Turkey, but was arrested at Goldingen, in Moravia. The arrest was reported to the Emperor at a moment when the Papal Nuncio was present, and he immediately claimed Borri as the prisoner of the Holy See. He was given up to the papal authorities on their promise to spare his life. He made a solemn abjuration in 1672, and having cured the French ambassador of a desperate malady, was transferred to the Castle of St. Angelo, where his imprisonment was of a mild character. Here he died August 10th, 1695. Borri's name