What are the gay parterre, the chequer'd shade,
The morning bower, the evening colonnade,
But soft recesses of uneasy minds,
To sigh unheard in to the passing winds?
So the struck deer, in some sequester'd part,
Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart;
There, stretch'd unseen in coverts hid from day,
Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away.
These sweet and musical lines, which fall on the ear with such a lulling harmony, are dashed with discord when we remember that the same woman who inspired them, was afterwards malignantly and coarsely designated as the Sappho of his satires. The generous heart never coolly degraded and insulted what it has once loved; but Pope could not be magnanimous,—it was not in his spiteful nature to forgive. He says of himself,
Whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time
Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.[134]
One of Pope's biographers[135] seems to insinuate, that he had been led on, by the lady's coquetry, to presume too far, and in consequence received a repulse, which he never forgave. This is not probable: Pope was not likely to be so desperate or dangerous an admirer; nor was Lady Mary, who had written with her diamond ring on a window,
Let this great maxim be my virtue's guide:
In part, she is to blame that has been tried,—
He comes too near, that comes to be denied!—
at all likely to expose herself to such ridiculous audacity. The truth is, I rather imagine, that there was a great deal of vanity on both sides; that the lady was amused and flattered, and the poet bewitched and in earnest: that she gave the first offence by some pointed sarcasm or personal ridicule, in which she was an adept, and that Pope, gradually awakened from his dream of adoration, was stung to the quick by her laughing scorn, and mortified and irritated by the consciousness of his wasted attachment. He makes this confession with extreme bitterness,—
Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit,
Sappho can tell you how this man was bit.
Prologue to the Satires.
The lines as they stand in a first edition are even more pointed and significant, and have much more asperity.