scorti; ut, quo me videlicet pro te amplius humiliarem, ampliorem apud te consequerer gratiam, et sic etiam excellentiæ tuæ gloriam minus læderem.” How completely Pope has falsified this sentiment in his famous paraphrase! His Epistle of _Eloisa to Abelard_ is, no doubt, an admirable composition; but it is unfair to Eloisa, since its main note is passion, not self-sacrifice, and self-sacrifice was the beginning, middle, and end of her love for Abelard. Once only she reproaches him. He had made her take the religious habit before assuming it himself. Why? Did he doubt her? She is overwhelmed with grief at the thought; for does he not know that she would have gladly either preceded or followed him into the jaws of hell? Nay, she must perforce have done so, for her heart was not hers, but his. Why, then, does he not write and console her? Was it concupiscence, rather than affection, that made them one? For her part, she has no difficulty in answering the question. “Dum tecum carnali fruerer voluptate, utrum id amore vel libidine agerem incertum pluribus habebatur.” Can they, she asks, be in any doubt now? “Nunc enim finis indicat quo id inchoaverrim principio.” The end surely shows by what motive she was impelled at the beginning. Everything she has given up—himself, the world, pleasure, and freedom; reserving to herself nothing but the luxury of still executing his will. Of a truth, it was so; and reading this extraordinary correspondence, anyone who is curious on the subject may discover for himself the eternal distinction between Short-memoried lust and long-remembering love.