riter, and that, in them, Pope comes nearer to genuine pathos
than in any other of his works. Next to these, the only literary event
of this portion of his career is his connection with the deplorable
"Three Hours after Marriage," a farce in which he was assisted by
Arbuthnot and Gay, the latter of whom bore the blame of the play's
failure. Pope's old enemy Dennis, was caricatured in it as Sir
Tremendous; but it had also the effect of adding another and abler foe
to the list of his opponents, the player and manager, Colley Cibber,
whose open ridicule of a part of this ill-judged _jeu d'esprit_ began
the feud which ultimately secured for him the supreme honors of the
"Dunciad."

But although Pope's militant nature never feared to make an enemy, his
friends were still in the majority. His "Homer," with its magnificent
subscription list, had opened a wider world to him; and his new
associates seem for the time to have partially seduced him from his
valetudinarian regime and ten hours daily study. In his varied and
alembicated correspondence we track him here and there, at Oxford or
at Bath, studying architecture with my Lord Burlington and gardening
with my Lord Bathurst or "beating the rounds" (probably only in
metaphor) with wilder wits such as my Lord of Warwick and Holland. One
of the prettiest of Pope's missives (some of them are not pretty) to
"Mademoiselles de Maple-Durham," as he styles the Blounts, describes a
visit he had paid to Queen Caroline's maids of honor at Hampton Court,
the Bellenden and Lepel of his minor verses. He dilates upon their
monotonous life of hunting, etiquette, and Westphalia ham, and then,
not (as Carruthers suggests) without oblique intention of lighting a
spark of jealousy in the fair Martha's bosom, records how he walked
for three or four mortal hours by moonlight with Mrs. Lepel, meeting
never a creature of quality but his Majesty King George I., giving
audience to his Vice Chamberlain "all alone under the garden wall."
Another epistolary idyl to Martha Blount, of which there are at least
four replicas, relates the sentimental death by lightning of the two
haymakers at Stanton Harcourt. Did Pope write this letter? or did Gay?
Or did they write it both together? This is a question which Pope's
editors have failed to settle. At all events, a similar composition
went to another of Pope's flames, the brilliant Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu, now absent from England with her husband, who was amba