ing in the laft marks of her expiring fondnefs

"See my lips tremble, and my eye-balls roll,

Suck my last breath, and catch my flying foul!”

But fuddenly recollecting herself, the wishes him to attend her in a character less paffionate, and rather to perform the duties of his holy function, in her dying moments.

"Ah no---in facred veftments may'ft thou "ftand,

"The hallow'd taper trembling in thy hand, "Present the Crofs before my lifted eye, "Teach me at once, and learn of me to die."

Then in a fudden and most pathetick tranfition, fhe calls on Abelard to take the last parting look of her, even in the agonies of death.

"Ah then, thy once-lov'd Eloïfa fee! "It will be then no crime to gaze on me. "See from my cheek the tranfient roses fly! "See the laft Sparkle languish in my eye!"

I will venture to say that a man who can read thefe lines with unfhaken nerves, has not a grain of sensibility in his composition.

She does not yet, however, relinquish the idea of Abelard; her fondnefs for him extends itself beyond the grave, and is expreffed in the most affecting and poetical ftrain.

"In trance extatic may thy pangs be drown'd, Bright clouds defcend, and Angels watch thee "round,

66

"From op'ning skies may ftreaming glories "thine,

"And Saints embrace thee with a love like "mine."

She laftly wishes that they may be buried in one grave; and prefuming that two wandering lovers may, ages hence, chance to gaze on their tomb in the Paraclete; fhe fuppofes, that, touched with mutual pity, they may make the following tender exclamation:

"Oh may we never love as these have lov'd!"

To carry the circumftance of commiferation fill higher, the imagines, that even a casual glance at their tomb, will affect the beholders with fuch involuntary pity, as even to check their fervour in the act of devotion.

"From the full choir when loud Hofannas "rife,

"And fwell the pomp of dreadful facrifice, "Amid that scene if fome relenting eye

"Glance on the stone where our cold relicks

“ lie,

This wifh was fulfilled. The body of Abelard, who died twenty years before Eloifa, was fent to her, and interred in the Monastery of the Paraclete.

"Devo

"Devotion's felf fhall fteal a thought from "heav'n,

"One human tear fhall drop, and be for'giv'n*."

Nothing can be more finely imagined than thefe lines, nor more expreffive of the tender fympathy which must be excited in every feeling breaft on recollecting the deplorable fate of this unhappy pair †.

Upon the whole, it is not, perhaps, too much to fay, that it is not in the power of language to defcribe the various tumults of conflicting paffions with greater energy and pathos; the oppofite fentiments, which agitate the foul of Eloifa, are marked by fuch natural and masterly tranfitions, that the mind of the reader is irrefiftibly attracted, and fympathizes with her in every alternate change of paffion. It may be truly faid,

-Pectus inaniter angit, "Irritat, mulcet, falfis terroribus implet, “Ut magus

*Here again the effayift feems to have misunderstood the poet's meaning. For he apprchends the lines above quoted to be defcriptive of the behaviour of the two lovers; whereas they feem to point out the more ftriking effect, which the accidental view of their tomb would have even on the congregation, during the time of divine fervice.

+ I agree, however, with the effayift, that with thefe eight lines the poem fhould have ended; for the eight additional verfes are comparatively languid and flat, and diminish the pathos of the foregoing fentiments.

The

The poet, in this epiftle, difplays an accurate knowledge of human nature. He appears to have been thoroughly acquainted with t'e fecret workings of the heart, and the force and influence of the various emotions which contending paffions produce *.

Nevertheless, with all it's poetical merit, it is much to be feared that it has done no service to the caufe of virtue; which it certainly never was the worthy poet's intention to injure. Though, taken all together, the piece conveys a most excellent moral, by fhewing the lamentable distress which attends the indulgence of fenfual appetite, and that religion alone has power to affuage and compofe the perturbation it creates; yet, at the fame time it is to be apprehended, that the exquifite painting and animating defcriptions of licentious paffion, which abound in detached parts of this epiftle, have too frequently made fatal impreffions on perfons of warm temperament, and of light reflection. The glowing lines which exprefs the extrava

* Our poet, with all his genius, had never yet been able to give that fupreme perfection to the ftrains of this poem, had he not been early converfant amongst the books in his mother's clofet, with thofe tracts of myftical devotion which fo much charm the female mind when religion turns its ftrongeft paffion upon love celeftial. And there being but one way of expreffing rapturous emotions, whether the object be earthly or heavenly; the imagination, which only is employed in thefe meditations, foars on the wings of poetry. So that our young poet could not but be much taken with this kind of reading: And, in fact, the beft of the mystic writers had a place in his library amongst the bards.

gance

gance of Eloifa's fondness, her contempt of connubial ties, and the unbounded freedom of her attachment, have been often repeated with too much fuccefs by artful libertines to forward the purposes of seduction, and have as often, perhaps, been remembered by the deluded fair, and deemed a fanction for illicit deviations from the paths of virtue.

Soon after this celebrated epiftle, Mr. POPE wrote his Temple of Fame, which, agreeably to his usual practice, he kept in his study for two years before it was published.

Nor did he then venture to make it public, till it had received the approbation of two critical judges, Mr. Steele and Mr. Addison, being, as he fays himself, afraid of nothing fo much as to impofe any thing on the world unworthy of its acceptance. Having fent a copy of it to the former, he received the following answer:

"I have read your Temple of Fame twice, "and cannot find any thing amifs, of weight "enough to call a fault, but fee in it a thousand "thousand beauties. Mr. Addison fhall fee it "to morrow; after his perusal of it, I will let you know his thoughts."

After it was published, he prefented it to a lady; accompanied with a letter which, if we may judge from the conclufion, appears to have been penned in a very jocofe mood.

"Now