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SWIFT'S POLITE CONVERSATION.-POPE,

303 give; but it may be nevertheless faithful in the same degree as Hogarth's exaggeration of the squint of Wilkes. Lady Smart, Miss Notable, and Lady Answerall, would have lost half their raciness, if they had been mere inventions of the humorist, and not highly coloured recollections of the days when he feasted in the fashionable world of London. When the great ladies are not coarse they are foolish and insipid:

"Lady Smart. Madam, do you love bohea tea?

Lady Answerall. Why, madam, I must confess I do love it, but it does not love me. Miss Notable. Indeed, madam, your ladyship is very sparing of your tea. 1 protest, the last I took was no more than water bewitched."

The modern kitchen would be ashamed of the trashy talk of the old drawing-room.

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In 1712 Pope published his first sketch of the "Rape of the Lock." Though only in his twenty-fourth year, he had been long familiar with the world of letters and of fashion-with the coffeehouses and the saloons. Whether in town or country, Pope habitually lived amongst what is termed the best society. He was not humiliated by those occasional glimpses of the interior of her temple to which Fashion, in our days, sometimes condescends to invite Genius. He was an admirer of women, according to that mode which implies the superiority of the admirer in the exuberance of his flattery. His brilliant conversation made him a welcome companion; and his graceful homage, and perhaps even his freedoms, ས་ gave him the reputation of a charming correspondent. Ridiculous we know he must sometimes have been, when he appeared in the character of a gay tempter; but his diminutive figure and infirm health perhaps gave him a readier admission to female confidence than the handsome Congreves and Wycherleys had attained. His intimacy with the fair ones does not appear, on the whole, to have won them his respect. He walked by moonlight in the gardens of Hampton Court with the maid of honour, Mary Lepell; and he sat with duchesses in their barges on the Thames, listening to "music on the water." But he came to the conclusion that in women only two passions"divide the kind "_

"The love of pleasure and the love of sway,"

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Pope, in the dedication of the "Rape of the Lock" to its heroine, Miss Arabella Fermor, says "it was intended only to divert 2 few young ladies, who have good sense and good humour enough to laugh not only at their sex's little unguarded follies, but at their own.

The character of Belinda, as it is now managed, resembles you in nothing but in beauty." The guardian-sylph has hovered

over Belinda in her morning dream; and he has whispered in her ear words which are not complimentary to the modesty or sense of women; but they are meant as compliments. Belinda is waked by her lap-dog, and her "eyes first opened on a billet-doux." The toilet is completed with the aid of "Betty" and her sylphs. "Awful beauty puts on all its charms." In the company of “fair nymphs and well-dressed youths " Belinda is launched on the silver Thames. Ariel and his attendant sprites sit on the sails of "the painted vessel." Their province is to tend the fair; to guard their powder, their essences, and their washes; even in dreams to bestow invention

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"To change a flounce, or add a furbelow."

The gay company repair to Hampton Court:

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The game of ombre succeeds; and then comes coffee. The tempt ing lock is cut off Belinda's hair, by an adventurous baron,

-610) 9025 9w" As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her head.” ́

She shrieks, as ladies shriek,

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"When husbands or when lar-dogs breathe their last.'

Rage, resentment, and despair take possession of her soul. The herce Thalestris " fans the rising fire." Gnomes come from * the cave of spleen" to make her curse the detested day, when the favourite curl was snatched from her head. A wise monitor, the grave Clarissa, counsels forgiveness and a return to good humour; but she counsels in vain. Good sense and good humour are to "preserve what beauty gains,"

"That men may say,,

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when we the front-box grace, Behold the first in virtue as in face."

That men may say!

This, then, was the reward of virtue. Duty

had no charms of its own:

"Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day,
Charm'd the small-pox, or chased old age away;

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Exquisite poem!

Who would not scorn what housewife's cares produce,
Or who would learn one earthly thing of use.".

Was it originally read as a gentle satire, or a true picture, of the ladies of the court of Anne? At twenty-four

.PRUDE AND COQUETTE.

305

Pope was not a professed satirist. At forty-seven he wrote his "Epistle to a Lady on the Characters of Women," in which, out of his mature experience he said;

"Men, some to business, some to pleasure take,

But every woman is at heart a rake."

False as this may be, no satirist would now dare to make the assertion, because a total change of manners has deprived him of such materials for the exercise of his art. We apprehend that there was no want in Pope's age of single figures and groups to be drawn at full length, as he has drawn his Rufa, and Silia, and Narcissa, and Flavia, and Chloe-exceptions to his general rule, that

66

"Most women have no characters at all.”

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The Essayists have two very marked species of the genus mulier-the coquette and the prude. Steele describes the coquette as a sect among women of all others the most mischievous.", He says, "as a rake among men is the man who lives in the constant abuse of his reason, so a coquette among women is one who lives in continual misapplication of her beauty." According to the same authority, "the prude and the coquette, as different as they appear in their behaviour, are in reality the same kind of women: The motive in both is the affectation of pleasing men. They are sisters of the same blood and constitution, only one chooses a grave and the other a light dress. The prude appears more virtuous, the coquette more vicious, than she really is.". Addison, in his "Vision of Justice," is scarcely less severe upon the beautiful creatures who come to look into "the mirror of truth." When the real character was shown without regard to the external features, "multitudes started at their own form, and would have broke the glass if they could have reached it.... I observed that some few were so hum! ble as to be surprised at their own charms." By way of apology, Addison concludes his paper by expressing his belief that his vision had "not done justice to the sex." He attempts, then, to repair" the partiality and extravagance of his vision," not in his own words, or by quotation from a poet of his own age, but in a passage written by one who had formed his notions of woman upon the models of a more heroic time-that which produced Lucy Hutchinson and Anne Fanshawe :

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All higher knowledge in her presence falls
Degraded; wisdom in discourse with her
Loses discountenanc'd and like folly shows;
Authority and reason on her wait,

As one intended first, not after made
Occasionally; and, to consummate all,

Greatness of mind, and nobleness, their seat
Build in her loveliest, and create an awe

About her, as a guard angelic plac'd."

Addison has supposed that his "imaginary historian, in looking back upon the "Spectator's " representations of the "diversions and characters of the English nation," would "make allowance for the mirth and humour of the author." If his words (he says) were interpreted in their literal meaning, "we must suppose that women of the first quality used to pass whole mornings at a puppet-show; and "that a promiscuous assembly of men and women were allowed to meet at midnight in masks within the verge of the court." We can scarcely imagine that the antiquity or the wit of the puppetshow attracted "women of the first quality." In Ben Jonson's time the puppet-show had a different name :

"'Twas a rare motion to be seen in Fleet Street."

Pepys saw the "puppet-plays "in Covent Garden; and the same performance was exhibited at Whitehall before Charles II.t In the days of the "Spectator," "one Powell" placed his show under the piazzas of Covent Garden. The sexton of the adjacent church of St. Paul complains that when he tolls in for week-day prayers, he finds that his congregation take the warning of the bell, morning and evening, to go to the puppet-show. "I have placed my son at the Piazzas, to acquaint the ladies that the bell rings for church, and that it stands on the other side of the garden; but they only laugh at the child." Mrs. Rachel Eyebright. has left the church for the puppet-show; and the sexton has lost the fees that gentlemen used to pay to be placed "over against" the fair lady. He has now "none but a few ordinary people, who come to church only to say their prayers." Powell exhibited Whittington and his Cat; and he introduced a pig to dance a minuet with Punch. The town was divided between the attractions of the puppet-show and of the Italian Opera. The wits of the time of Anne tried to laugh down what they treated as an absurdity" that an audience would sit out an evening to hea dramatical performance written in a language which they did not understand." In their view it was a monstrous practice. "But what makes it more astonishing, "Diary," Oct. 8, 1661

"Paradise Lost," book viii.
"Spectator," No. 14.

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THE MASQUERADE.

307 it is not the taste of the rabble, but of persons of the greatest politeness which has established it." Addison argues that "if the Italians have a genius for music above the English, the English have a genius for other performances of a much higher nature, and capable of giving the mind a much nobler entertainment." He bitterly complains that the tragedy of "Phædra and Hippolitus " -a dull mythological affair on the French model-was scarcely heard a third time, amongst a people "so stupidly fond of the Italian Opera." The tragedy-writers strove in vain against the new attraction. Addison thought to supplant it by his opera of “Rosamond; " which poem had no success. It failed; because though the dialogue was intelligible, the music was heavy and spiritless. Gay wrote his " Beggar's Opera " in ridicule of the opera of Fashion. Its object has long since been forgotten. Its popularity mainly rests upon the charming old English airs to which its songs are adapted.

The Italian Opera, once planted in England, has survived the assaults of the witty and the prejudices of the vulgar. It is thor, oughly acclimated. The interchange of taste has made that popu, lar which was once only genteel. It is fortunate that a promiscu ous assembly of men and women in masks is now wholly confined to the disreputable portion of society. What the Masquerade was has been told by Addison with such original humour, in that portion of his Essays which is little known, that we may give its leading features without much curtailment. The Tory Fox-hunter comes to town in the second year of George II., and, having travelled all night, arrives about daybreak at Charing Cross. There, "to his great surprise, he saw a running footman carried in a chair, followed by a waterman, in the same kind of vehicle. He was wondering at the extravagance of their masters, that furnished them with such dresses and accommodations, when on a sudden he beheld a chimney-sweeper, conveyed after the same manner with three footmen running before him. During his progress through the Strand, he met with several other figures no less wonderful and surprising, Seeing a great many in rich morning gowns, he was amazed to find that persons of quality were up so early; and was no less astonished to see many lawyers in their bar-gowns, when he knew by his almanac that Term was ended." Four heads are popped out of a hackney-coach, and seeing the fox-hunter, "with his long whip, horse-hair periwig, jockey-pelt, and coat without sleeves, fancied him to be one of the masqueraders on horseback, and received him with a loud peal of laughter." He concluded "Freeholder," No. 44

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