_curiosa felicitas_, a fruitful soil and careful cultivation. Here is no crudeness of sense, nor asperity of language.--JOHNSON. Of all stories, ancient or modern, there is not, perhaps, a more proper one to furnish out an elegiac epistle than that of Eloisa and Abelard. Their distresses were of a most singular and peculiar kind, and their names sufficiently known, but not grown trite or common by too frequent usage. Pope was a most excellent improver, if no great original inventor, and we see how finely he has worked up the hints of distress that are scattered up and down in Abelard and Eloisa's letters, and in a little French history of their lives and misfortunes. Abelard was reputed the most handsome, as well as the most learned man, of his time, according to the kind of learning then in vogue. An old chronicle, quoted by Andrew du Chesne, informs us, that scholars flocked to his lectures from all quarters of the Latin world; and his contemporary, St. Bernard, relates, that he numbered among his disciples many principal ecclesiastics and cardinals at the court of Rome. Abelard himself boasts, that when he retired into the country, he was followed by such immense crowds of scholars that they could get neither lodgings nor provisions sufficient for them. He met with the fate of many learned men, to be embroiled in controversy, and accused of heresy; for St. Bernard, whose influence and authority were very great, got his opinion of the Trinity condemned at a council held at Sens, 1140. But the talents of Abelard were not confined to theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, and the thorny paths of scholasticism. He gave proofs of a lively genius by many poetical performances, insomuch that he was reputed to be the author of the famous Romance of the Rose, which, however, was indisputably written by John of Meun, a little city on the banks of the Loire, about four miles from Orleans. It was he who continued and finished the Romance of the Rose, which William de Lorris had left imperfect forty years before. There is undoubted evidence that [the earliest portion] was written an hundred years after Abelard flourished, and if chronology did not absolutely contradict the notion of his being the author of this very celebrated piece, yet are there internal arguments sufficient to confute it. There are many severe and satirical strokes on the character of Eloisa which the pen of Abelard never would have given. In one passage she is introduced speaking with indecency and obscenity; in another all the vices and bad qualities of women are represented as assembled together in her alone: Qui les mœurs féminins savoit Car tres-tous en soi les avoit.