Note 449 — RAPE OF THE LOCK.

A famous book written about that time by a woman: full of court and party scandal; and in a loose effeminacy of style and sentiment, which well-suited the debauched taste of the better vulgar.—Warburton.

Mrs. Manley, the author of it, was the daughter of Sir Roger Manley, Governor of Guernsey, and the author of the first volume of the famous Turkish Spy, published from his papers, by Dr. Midgley. She was known and admired by all the wits of the times. She died in the house of Alderman Barber, Swift's friend; and was said to have been the mistress of the alderman.—Warton.

Her actions were even more infamous than her writings. One Mary Thompson had been kept by a person named Pheasant, and at his death, in 1705, she endeavoured to pass herself off for his wife, that she might have a right of dower out of his estate. According to Mr. Nichols, in a note to Steele's Letters, Mrs. Manley was bribed by the promise of 100l. a-year for life, to aid Mrs. Thompson in getting a forged entry of the marriage inserted in a register. The case was heard in Doctors' Commons, and Mrs. Manley's guilt was proved. But neither her profligacy nor her frauds could deprive her of the countenance of political partisans like Swift and Prior, or of good-natured men of pleasure like Steele.