pe, it is curious to relate, though he was a near neighbour, she
saw less and less. It has been suggested that the first rift in the lute
was her parody of his verses about the lovers struck by lightning; but
even he, most sensitive of men, can scarcely have been seriously offended.
So far as is known, only two letters passed between them after 1719.

"I pass my time in a small snug set of dear intimates, and go very
little into the _grand monde_, which has always had my hearty contempt"
(she wrote to Lady Mar in the spring of 1722). "I see sometimes Mr.
Congreve, and very seldom Mr. Pope, who continues to embellish his house
at Twickenham. He has made a subterranean grotto, which he has furnished
with looking-glass, and they tell me it has a very good effect. I here
send you some verses addressed to Mr. Gay, who wrote him a
congratulatory letter on the finishing his house. I stifled them here,
and I beg they may die the same death at Paris, and never go further
than your closet:

'Ah, Friend, 'tis true--this truth you lovers know--
In vain my structures rise, my gardens grow,
In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes
Of hanging mountains, and of sloping greens:
Joy lives not here; to happier seats it flies,
And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes.

What is the gay parterre, the chequer'd shade,
The morning bower, the ev'ning colonnade,
But soft recesses of uneasy minds,
To sigh unheard in, to the passing winds?
So the struck deer in some sequestrate 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.'

It may here be remarked that in Epistle VIII of the _Moral Essays_ Pope
had a line:

"And other beauties envy Wortley's eyes";

but in a reprint of the poem he substituted [Lady] "Worsley" for
"Wortley" in order to give the impression that "Wortley" had been a
misprint.

Pope's quarrel with Lady Mary began in or about 1722. The cause is
obscure. Many reasons have been advanced. Lady Mary in her
correspondence gives no clue as to the breach.

It has been said that it arose out of the fact that Pope lent the
Montagus a pair of sheets and that they were returned unwashed, to the
great indignation of his mother who lived with him. It is difficult to
believe this.

Others have it that he was jealous of the favour which Lady Mary
accorded to the Duke of Wharton and Lo