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By nature yielding, stubborn but for fame;
Made slaves by honour, and made fools by shame.
Marriage may all those petty tyrants chase,
But sets up one, a greater, in their place :
Well might you wish for change by those accursed,
But the last tyrant ever proves the worst.
Still in constraint your suffering sex remains,
Or bound in formal, or in real chains :
Whole years neglected, for some months adored,
The fawning servant turns a haughty lord.
Ah, quit not the free innocence of life
For the dull glory of a virtuous wife ;
Nor let false shows nor empty titles please :
Aim not at joy, but rest content with ease.

The gods, to curse Pamela' with her prayers,
Gave the gilt coach and dappled Flanders mares,
The shining robes, rich jewels, beds of state,
And, to complete her bliss, a fool for mate.
She glares in balls, front-boxes, and the Ring,
A vain, unquiet, glittering, wretched thing !
Pride, pomp, and state but reach her outward part;
She sighs, and is no duchess at her heart.

But, Madam, if the Fates withstand, and you
Are destined Hymen's willing victim too ;
Trust not too much your now resistless charms,
Those, age or sickness soon or late disarms :
Good humour only teaches charms to last,
Still makes new conquests, and maintains the past;
Love raised on beauty will like that decay,
Our hearts may bear its slender chain a day;
As flowery bands in wantonness are worn,
A morning's pleasure, and at evening torn ;

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· The ordinary pronunciation of the name is “ Paměla," from the Greek Tây Mémos. The name of Richardson's heroine has always been pronounced

in that way. It is difficult to see what the name can have meant pronounced as in Pope's verse.

2 Compare Moral Essays, ii. 257,292.

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This binds in ties more easy, yet more strong,
The willing heart, and only holds it long.

Thus Voiture's early care still shone the same,'
And Montausier was only changed in name;?
By this ev'n now they live, ev'n now they charm,
Their wit still sparkling, and their flames still warm.

Now crowned with myrtle on the Elysian coast,
Amid those lovers, joys his gentle ghost :
Pleased, while with smiles his happy lines you view,
And finds a fairer Rambouillet in you.'
The brightest eyes of France inspired his Muse;
The brightest eyes of Britain now peruse;
And dead, as living, 'tis our author's pride
Still to charm those who charm the world beside.

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EPISTLE X.

TO THE SAME,

ON HER LEAVING THE TOWN AFTER THE CORONATION.

THE title to this Epistle in all the editions published during Pope's lifetime is the same as in Warburton's edition; but as the address of the previous Epistle was, up to 1739, To a Young Lady, we have no authoritative statement from the poet, till that year, with respect to the person whom he intended to honour. In 1739 he affixed Miss Blount's name to the Epistle accompanying the present of Voiture's works. By Miss Blount he, of course, meant Martha, for he had long before quarrelled with Teresa ; and he thus appeared to give both Epistles to the younger sister.

Yet the second was certainly addressed in the first instance to Teresa, as we see by the MS. reading of ver. 7, which Mr. Carruthers has published, and as might be inferred from the appropriation of the fancy names Zephalinda and Parthenissa in the text as it stands. When Teresa fell out of the poet's good graces, she was removed, in the same manner as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, from her poetical throne, and the place of honour was assigned to her younger sister. Whether or not Teresa Blount was really the “ Young Lady” to whom the Epistle, accompanying the works of Voiture, was in the first instance addressed, is an open question. If it was written, as Pope pretends, when he was only seventeen (see note 1, p. 217), Teresa Blount would have been at that date a mere child ; probably, however, the poet in this, as in many other cases, ante-dated the composition out of vanity; at any rate, he did not reproduce the statement about the author's age in any edition after 1735. Again, if the poem was originally addressed to Teresa, Pope's acquaintance with the Blounts must have begun some time before the commencement of his correspondence with them, for the Epistle is commended by Cromwell in a letter to Pope of 5th December, 1710. Cromwell in that letter says the Epistle“ is as faultless as the fair to whom it is addressed, be she never so perfect,” an expression which seems to show that he took the “young lady” for an imaginary being. This was very likely the case, and Pope may have appropriated the verses to Teresa Blount, as a compliment, after making her acquaintance.

This Epistle, which with the preceding one and the Epistle to Jervas was published in the folio volume of Poems in 1717, is full of grace and charm. It is conceived in the vein of exquisite and well-bred pleasantry which characterises the Rape of the Lock.

Among Warburton's papers I find a MS. copy of “Lines at the conclusion of Mr. Pope's verses to Mrs. M. B. on her leaving town.” The copyist, R. G. (perhaps Richard Graham, who printed Pope's Epistle to Jervas, with his edition of Fresnoy's Art of Painting, before the lines appeared in the quarto of 1717), says, “ The following were taken from Mr. Pope's original MS., and were never printed.” Then follow the sixteen offensive lines first printed by