omer, Virgil. In a few years he had dipped into a great number of the
English, French, Italian, Latin, and Greek poets. "This I did," he says,
"without any design, except to amuse myself; and got the languages by
hunting after the stories in the several poets I read, rather than read
the books to get the languages. I followed everywhere as my fancy led me,
and was like a boy gathering flowers in the fields and woods, just as they
fell in his way. These five or six years I looked upon as the happiest in
my life." Is not here a beautiful holiday picture? The forest and the
fairy story-book--the boy spelling Ariosto or Virgil under the trees,
battling with the Cid for the love of Chimene, or dreaming of Armida's
garden--peace and sunshine round about--the kindest love and tenderness
waiting for him at his quiet home yonder--and Genius throbbing in his young
heart, and whispering to him, "You shall be great; you shall be famous;
you, too, shall love and sing; you will sing her so nobly that some kind
heart shall forget you are weak and ill-formed. Every poet had a love.
Fate must give one to you too,"--and day by day he walks the forest, very
likely looking out for that charmer. "They were the happiest days of his
life," he says, when he was only dreaming of his fame: when he had gained
that mistress she was no consoler.

That charmer made her appearance, it would seem, about the year 1705, when
Pope was seventeen. Letters of his are extant, addressed to a certain Lady
M----, whom the youth courted, and to whom he expressed his ardour in
language, to say no worse of it, that is entirely pert, odious, and
affected. He imitated love compositions as he had been imitating love
poems just before--it was a sham mistress he courted, and a sham passion,
expressed as became it. These unlucky letters found their way into print
years afterwards, and were sold to the congenial Mr. Curll. If any of my
hearers, as I hope they may, should take a fancy to look at Pope's
correspondence, let them pass over that first part of it; over, perhaps,
almost all Pope's letters to women; in which there is a tone of not
pleasant gallantry, and, amidst a profusion of compliments and
politenesses, a something which makes one distrust the little pert,
prurient bard. There is very little indeed to say about his loves, and
that little not edifying. He wrote flames and raptures and elaborate verse
and prose for Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; but that passion prob