Some years before, he had become acquainted with Lady Mary Wortley
Montague, the most brilliant woman of her age--witty, fascinating,
beautiful, and accomplished--full of enterprise and spirit, too,
although decidedly French in her tastes, manners, and character. Pope
fell violently in love with her, and had her undoubtedly in his eye when
writing "Eloisa and Abelard," which he did at Oxford in 1716, shortly
after her going abroad, and which appeared the next year. His passion
was not requited,--nay, was treated with contempt and ridicule; and he
became in after years a bitter enemy and foul-mouthed detractor of the
lady, although after her return, in 1718, she resided near him at
Twickenham, and they seemed outwardly on good terms.

In 1717, and the succeeding year, Pope lost successively his father,
Parnell, Garth, and Rowe, and bitterly felt their loss. He finished, as
we have seen, the "Iliad" in 1718; but the fifth and sixth volumes,
which were the last, did not appear till 1720. Its success, which at the
time was triumphant, roused against him the whole host of envy and
detraction. Dennis, and all Grub Street with him, were moved to assail
him. Pamphlets after pamphlets were published, all of which, after
reading with writhing anguish, Pope had the resolution to bind up into
volumes--a great collection of calumny, which he preserved, probably,
for purposes of future revenge. His own friends, on the other hand,
hailed his work with applause,--Gay writing a most graceful and elegant
poem, in _ottava rima_, entitled, "Mr Pope's Welcome Home from Greece,"
in which his different friends are pictured as receiving him home on the
shores of Britain, after an absence of six years. Bentley, that stern
old Grecian, avoided the extremes of a howling Grub Street on the one
hand, and a flattering aristocracy on the other, and expressed what is,
we think, the just opinion when he said, "It is a pretty poem, but it is