Addison, Steele and Pope, by whom she was greatly admired and praised-by Mr. Pope in particular, who wrote some pleasing and complimentary verses to her. Mr. Wortley was soon appointed ambassador to Constantinople and thither he took his wife and their young son, traveling leisurely across Europe, by way of Rotterdam, The Hague, Bologne, Nuremberg, Ratisbon and Vienna, to his post.

It was at Rotterdam that Lady Mary began that career of letter-writing since so famous. She wrote to her sister, the Countess of Mar, to Mr. Pope and to others, giving the description of her travels, the language, the manners and the customs of the countries through which she passed. She was a close observer, and little escaped her notice. She described the fashions at Vienna, copied Latin inscriptions on the monuments of Stamboul, told of her dinner with a grand vizier's lady and wrote a very plain-spoken account of the baths of Sophia. She also visited and saw "as much of the seraglio as is to be seen," which was not much. She wore the Turkish costume, and had her miniature painted in it, and copied Turkish verses for the benefit of Mr. Pope.

At Constantinople her daughter, who subsequently became the Countess of Bute, was born,

and Lady Mary, who had learned the system of inoculation for the smallpox then in vogue in Constantinople, had both of her children successfully inoculated, and she proclaimed far and wide the blessings and safety of the system. The party now returned to England, and Lady Mary became for the time the most noted woman in Europe. She was the first of woman travelers and tourists, and had written most charming descriptions of the countries through which she had passed. She had brought back an antidote against the smallpox, which gave her a great reputation as a humanitarian. Above all she was learned, witty and beautiful, an ornament to any society, and from that time on for many years she was a leader not only in high social but in literary circles. Her husband, whose tastes were far apart from hers, took a villa for her at Twickenham, next door to Mr. Pope's, and a good deal of letter-writing and poetry passed between the poet and Lady Mary, and for some years they appeared to be very good friends. Meantime she kept up her correspondence with her sister, the Countess of Mar, who was obliged to live in Paris, her husband being a Jacobite. It is in these letters that all the gossip and scandal of London society are related in the plainest of

language, for the edification and delight of her dear sister, and with but little thought that posterity would peep over her sister's shoulders and read those letters.

Then came the quarrel with Pope, world renowned since, the cause of which has never clearly been made known. They went at each other in the most unscrupulous, scandalous and indecent manner, calling vile names and using every epithet in the vocabulary of Billingsgate. Lady Mary got much the worst of it, as everyone did who came to an encounter of wits with the crooked little poet-"the wicked wasp of Twickenham."

For the next twenty years of her life Lady Mary lived in France or Italy, her husband not accompanying her, though always proposing to do so. It was a sort of decent separation of husband and wife, at last grown perfectly uncongenial.

After her husband's death she returned to England, aged and broken in health. She did not long survive. It was not until nearly a century after her death that her complete works were collected and published by her grandson, Lord Wharncliffe.

NICHOLAS ROWE,

DRAMATIST AND POET-LAUREATE.

(1674-1718.)

EVERY student of Shakespeare feels, or ought to feel, some obligation to the memory of Nicholas Rowe, who was the first of the modern editors of Shakespeare and the first of his biographers. He it was who rescued from tradition those stories of Shakespeare's life that were still related in the greenrooms of the theaters by actors who had known and conversed with the actors of Shakespeare's own time. Rowe was on intimate terms with Betterton, who was the friend of Davenant, who had lived on familiar terms with Ben Jonson and as a child had known Shakespeare. It was from Betterton that Rowe received the most of the information on which his biography of the great dramatist was based. Rowe's edition of Shakespeare proved to be an immense stimulus to the study of the plays.

But Rowe is entitled to be remembered on his own account as well, for although not a great poet or a remarkable dramatist he wrote plays that continued to be represented on the stage for more than a hundred years after his death, and might still be seen if the old system of stock companies were still in force. Down to within living memory the leading characters in his plays were favorites with the great tragic actors and actresses in every generation since they were written.

Nicholas Rowe was born in Bedfordshire, England, in 1674, and was educated for the bar, his father being a distinguished barrister and a sergeant-at-law of that period. Nicholas was inclined to court the muses rather than the more jealous mistress, and his father dying when he was nineteen, leaving him a moderate income, he straightway abandoned the law and devoted himself to literature. He became the friend of Pope and associated with Swift, Addison, Steele and Prior, and when he was twenty-six his first tragedy, "The Ambitious Stepmother," was produced. The play was successful, not so much on account of its own merit as that Betterton, Booth, Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Bracegirdle appeared in it and exerted their superb powers in the representation. It is a play that has not enough poetic fire in it