“January 15th, 1789.—Dr. Joseph Warton, talking last night at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s of Pope’s Essay on Man, said that much of his system was borrowed from King’s book on the Origin of Evil. This was first published in Dublin, in Latin, in 1704, and translated into English by Bishop Law, in 1731, not very long before the Essay on Man was written. Dr. Warton mentioned that Lord Lyttleton told him that he lived much with Pope at that time, and that Pope was then undoubtedly a Free-thinker; though he afterwards either changed his opinion, or thought it prudent to adopt Warburton’s explanation and comment, who saw his meaning as he chose to express it, ‘better than he did himself.’ Dr. Warton forbore to state this in his Essay on Pope.”
The subject of the following conversation has been so much the theme of animadversion in talk, in writing, in verse, and in prose, that notwithstanding her talents, there is too much reason to believe she opened the way for a large share of that scandal which fastened upon her fame in life and has clung to her in the grave. Unlucky, indeed, must that person be against whom Pope and Walpole united in the bitterest censure! Some further particulars will be found in the note subjoined to this statement, made to the hero of our story.
“March 8, 1789.—Mr. Horace Walpole remembers Lady M. W. Montague perfectly well, having passed a year with her at Florence. He told me this morning that she was not handsome, had a wild, staring eye, was much marked with the smallpox, which she endeavoured to conceal, by filling
