She wrote a tragedy called Aristomenes, or the Royal Shepherd, to which Pope may be supposed to allude in his letter to Caryll of Dec. 15, 1713, where he says, "I was invited to dinner to my Lady Winchelsea, and after dinner to hear a play read, at both which I sat in great disorder with sickness at my head and stomach." Pope omitted her rugged, bald, prosaic verses in 1736, probably because they were intrinsically worthless, and because the name of the author had ceased to carry any weight. In 1727 and 1732 they were printed with Pope's poems in Lintot's Miscellany, and doubtless with the sanction of Pope himself.] [Footnote 4: These verses, with the heading, "To my friend Mr. Pope, on his Pastorals," originally appeared in 1709, in the same volume of Tonson's Miscellany which contained the Pastorals themselves. In the fifth edition of Lintot's Miscellany, 1727, and in the sixth edition, 1732, the poem of Wycherley, who was then dead, is prefixed to Pope's pieces, and bears the title, "To Mr. Pope at sixteen years old, on occasion of his Pastorals." This was untrue, and seems designed to convey a false idea of Pope's precocity. The lines were not addressed to him till he was twenty, as appears from Wycherley's letter of May 18, 1708, in which he says, "I have made a compliment in verse upon the printing your Pastorals which you shall see when you see me." Dennis, and others, accused Pope of being the author of the flattering tribute. The poet appealed in refutation of the charge to Wycherley's letters, and added that the first draught, and corrected copy of the panegyric, which were still extant in the Harley library in Wycherley's handwriting, would show "that if they received any alteration from Mr. Pope it was in the omission of some of his own praises." Documents to which nobody had access proved nothing. Mr. Croker considered that there was strong internal evidence from the smoothness of the rhythm, the antithetical style, and the nature of the commendation, that Pope must have assisted in reducing the lines to their present shape. The mannerism of both authors can be clearly traced in them. They have the stamp of Wycherley, improved by Pope.] [Footnote 5: If Wycherley had been capable of anything of the kind, this, and the previous couplet, might have been written after the Essay on Criticism, but surely could not have been inspired by a perusal of the manuscript of the Pastorals.--CROKER.] [Footnote 6: This line was omitted by Pope in 1736.] [Footnote 7: From Boileau's Art of Poetry, Chant ii. v. 1.--WARTON.] [Footnote 8: This triplet was omitted by Pope in the edition of 1736.] [Footnote 9: Francis Knapp, of Chilton, in Berkshire, Gent. He was of St. John's College, Oxford, and afterwards demy of Magdalen College.--CUNNINGHAM.