to a bookseller, declared that the character of Belinda resembled her in nothing but in beauty, and affirmed that he could never hope that his poem should pass through the world half so uncensured as she had done. It would seem that the modern critics who have undertaken to champion Miss Fermor against what they are pleased to term the revolting behavior of the poet are fighting a needless battle. A pretty girl who would long since have been forgotten sat as an unconscious model to a great poet; he made her the central figure in a brilliant picture and rendered her name immortal. That is the whole story, and when carping critics begin to search the poem for the improprieties of conduct to which they say Pope alluded, one has but to answer in Pope's own words. If to her share some female errors fall, Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all. Pope's statement in the dedication that he had been forced into publishing the first draft of the poem before his design of enlarging it was half executed is probably to be taken, like many of his statements, with a sufficient grain of salt. Pope had a curious habit of protesting that he was forced into publishing his letters, poems, and other trifles, merely to forestall the appearance of unauthorized editions. It is more likely that it was the undoubted success of 'The Rape of the Lock' in its first form which gave him the idea of working up the sketch into a complete mock-heroic poem. Examples of such a poem were familiar enough to Pope. Not to go back to the pseudo-Homeric mock epic which relates the battle of the frogs and mice, Vida in Italy and Boileau in France, with both of whom Pope, as the 'Essay on Criticism' shows, was well acquainted, had done work of this kind. Vida's description of the game of chess in his 'Scacchia Ludus' certainly gave him the model for the game of ombre in the third canto of 'The Rape of the Lock'; Boileau's 'Lutrin' probably suggested to him the idea of using the mock-heroic for the purposes of satire.