In a very old epistle dedicatory, addressed to Philip IV. of France by this same John of Meun, and prefixed to a French translation of Boetius, it appears that he also translated the epistles of Abelard to Heloisa, which were in high vogue at the court. It is to be regretted that we have no exact picture of the person and beauty of Eloisa. Abelard himself says that she was "facie non infima."[564] Her extraordinary learning many circumstances concur to confirm; particularly one, which is, that the nuns of the Paraclete are wont to have the office of Whitsunday read to them in Greek, to perpetuate the memory of her understanding that language. A lady learned as was Eloisa in that age, who indisputably understood the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew tongues, was a kind of prodigy.[565] Her literature, says Abelard, "in toto regno nominatissimam fecerat," and we may be sure more thoroughly attached him to her. Bussy Rabutin speaks in high terms of commendation of the purity of Eloisa's latinity,--a judgment worthy a French count. There is a force but not an elegance in her style, which is blemished, as might be expected, by many phrases unknown to the pure ages of the Roman language, and by many Hebraisms borrowed from the translation of the Bible. However happy and judicious the subject of Pope's Epistle may be thought to be, as displaying the various conflicts and tumults between duty and pleasure, between penitence and passion, that agitated the mind of Eloisa, yet we must candidly own that the principal circumstance of distress is of so indelicate a nature, that it is with difficulty disguised by the exquisite art and address of the poet. The capital and unrivalled beauties of the poem arise from the striking images and descriptions of the convent, and from the sentiments drawn from the mystical books of devotion, particularly Madame Guion, and the Archbishop of Cambray.[566] The Epistle is on the whole, one of the most highly finished, and certainly the most interesting of the pieces of our author; and, together with the Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, is the only instance of the pathetic Pope has given us. I think one may venture to remark that the reputation of Pope as a poet among posterity will be principally owing to his Windsor Forest, his Rape of the Lock, and his Eloisa to Abelard, whilst the facts and characters alluded to and exposed in his later writings, will be forgotten and unknown, and their poignancy and propriety little relished. For wit and satire are transitory and perishable, but nature and passion are eternal.--WARTON.