erested in my preservation. I am sure I can answer
for my hearty gratitude and everlasting acknowledgment of a service much
more important than that of saving my life."

In Lady Mary's correspondence there is no further reference to this
sorry business, and so it cannot be said how it ended. Nor can it be
decided whether Remond really believed he had been swindled or whether
he was just a blackmailer.

The intimacy between Lady Mary and Pope is especially interesting
because it culminated in one of the most famous quarrels in the literary
annals of this country, and second only to that between Pope and
Addison.

When Lady Mary went abroad in 1716 Pope, who always wanted to make the
best of both worlds, thought, it has been related by his biographers, of
what dramatic situation describing the separation of lovers would best
suit him to express his feelings, and he found exactly what he wanted on
the supposed authentic letters of Eloisa to Abelard. Pope sent Lady Mary
a volume of his poems, saying: "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."

Pope corresponded with Lady Mary during the two years of her stay
abroad. The first letter from Pope begins:

"So natural as I find it is to me to neglect every body else in your
company, I am sensible I ought to do anything that might please you, and
I fancied upon recollection, our writing the letter you proposed was of
that nature. I therefore sate down to my part of it last night, when I
should have gone out of town. Whether or no you will order me, in
recompense, to see you again, I leave to you, for indeed I find I begin
to behave myself worse to you than to any other woman, as I value you
more, and yet if I thought I should not see you again, I would say some
things here, which I could not to your person. For I would not have you
die deceived in me, that is, go to Constantinople without knowing that I
am to some degree of extravagance, as well as with the utmost reason,
madam, your, etc."

Some passages from Pope's subsequent letters must be given to indicate
the lines on which this correspondence was conducted.

"You may easily imagine how desirous I must be of correspondence with a
person who had taught me long ago, that it was as possible to