, becomes helpless and useless, and ceasing to tremble, rusts.
She seems to have been so totally unworthy of tenderness, that it is an
additional proof of the kindness of Pope's heart to have been able to
love such a being. But we must love something. I agree with Mr. B. that
_she_ 'could at no time have regarded _Pope personally_ with
attachment,' because she was incapable of attachment; but I deny that
Pope could not be regarded with personal attachment by a worthier woman.
It is not probable, indeed, that a woman would have fallen in love with
him as he walked along the Mall, or in a box at the opera, nor from a
balcony, nor in a ball-room: but in society he seems to have been as
amiable as unassuming, and, with the greatest disadvantages of figure,
his head and face were remarkably handsome, especially his eyes. He was
adored by his friends--friends of the most opposite dispositions, ages,
and talents--by the old and wayward Wycherley, by the cynical Swift, the
rough Atterbury, the gentle Spence, the stern attorney-bishop Warburton,
the virtuous Berkeley, and the 'cankered Bolingbroke.' Bolingbroke wept
over him like a child; and Spence's description of his last moments is
at least as edifying as the more ostentatious account of the deathbed of
Addison. The soldier Peterborough and the poet Gay, the witty Congreve
and the laughing Rowe, the eccentric Cromwell and the steady Bathurst,
were all his intimates. The man who could conciliate so many men of the
most opposite description, not one of whom but was a remarkable or a
celebrated character, might well have pretended to all the attachment
which a reasonable man would desire of an amiable woman.

"Pope, in fact, wherever he got it, appears to have understood the sex
well. Bolingbroke, 'a judge of the subject,' says Warton, thought his
'Epistle on the Characters of Women' his 'masterpiece.' And even with
respect to the grosser passion, which takes occasionally the name of
'_romantic_,' accordingly as the degree of sentiment elevates it above
the definition of love by Buffon, it may be remarked, that it does not
always depend upon personal appearance, even in a woman. Madame Cottin
was a plain woman, and might have been virtuous, it may be presumed,
without much interruption. Virtuous she was, and the consequences of
this inveterate virtue were that two different admirers (one an elderly
gentleman) killed themselves in despair (see Lady Morgan's 'France'). I
would not