FOOTNOTES:
[129] In Litchfield Cathedral stands the only memorial ever raised, by public or private gratitude, to Lady Mary; it is a cenotaph, with Beauty weeping the loss of her preserver, and an inscription, of which the following words form the conclusion:—"To perpetuate the memory of such benevolence, and to express her gratitude for the benefit she herself received from this alleviating art, this monument is erected by Henrietta Inge, relict of Theodore William Inge, and daughter of Sir John Wrottesley, Bart, in 1789." One would like to have known the woman who raised this monument.
[130] "You shall see (said Lady Mary referring to these letters) what a goddess he made of me in some of them, though he makes such a devil of me in his writings afterwards, without any reason that I know of."—Spence.
[131] I remember seeing, I think, in one of D'Israeli's works a fragment of some lines which Lady Mary wrote on her husband, and which expressed the utmost bitterness of female scorn.
[132] See, in Pope's Miscellanies, the sprightly stanzas, beginning "Yes, I beheld th' Athenian Queen." They are addressed to Lady Fanny, who had presented the poet with a standish, and two pens, one of steel and one of gold. She was the fourth daughter of Earl Ferrers. After numbering more adorers in her train than any beauty of her time, she died unmarried, in 1778.—Collins' Peerage, by Brydges.
In beauty and wit,
No mortal as yet,
To question your empire has dared;
But men of discerning
Have thought that, in learning,
To yield to a lady was hard.
[134] "I have often wondered," says the gentle-spirited Cowper, "that the same poet who wrote the Dunciad should have written these lines,—
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me!
Alas! for Pope, if the mercy he showed to others, was the measure of the mercy he received!"—Cowper's Letters, vol. iii. p. 195.
[135] Mr. Bowles.
[136] Erinna: her real name is not known. But she was a friend of Lady Suffolk, who wrote bad verses, and submitted them to Pope for correction.