Hampton Court ... Illustrated with forty-three drawings by Herbert ...

POPE AND MARMONTEL 211
calls it in his slyly ceremonious introduction, and
" Iknow how disagreeable it is to make use of hard
words before a lady : " so " the Rosicrucians are a
peopleImust bring you acquainted with. The best
accountIknow of them is in a French book called
Le Comte de Gabalis, which both in its title and size
is so like a novel, that many of the fair sex have read
it for one by mistake." What the Coufit of Gabalis
has introduced into literature and Mr. Pope into
poetry, Monsieur J. F. Marmontel 1 has shown as
entering into the most intimate thoughts of
the fanciful ladies of the age.
" " Pope's delightful
"
machinery made the sylphs the fashion. La
fable des Sylphes etoit a la mode." The " Airy
Beings " who wait upon Belinda become of the very
texture of the dreams of the fair Elise when she quits
the convent to be the wife of the Marquis de Volange,
persuaded that next to a lover the most dangerous
being in all nature is a husband. So " il lui etoit
tombe sous la main quelques-uns de ces romans oil
l'on peint le commerce delicieux de ces esprits avec
les mortelles; et pour elle ces brillantes chimeres
avoient tout le charme de la verite." Belinda, or
Mrs. Arabella Fermor, must needs be informed of
the gentle spirits who wait upon her; as that " the
four elements are inhabited by spirits, which they call
Sylphs, Gnomes, Nymphs, and Salamanders. The
gnomes, or Dæmons of Earth, delight in mischief,
but the Sylphs, whose habitation is in the air, are
1Contes Moraux, " Le Mari Sylphe."