Written before
October 1761
at the request
of Gray's friend
Henrietta Speed
.
Walpole
transcribed and sent it in a
letter to Caroline Campbell, Countess of Ailesbury, 28 November 1761.
First published, beginning "With beauty, with pleasure surrounded,
to languish", in Pope's
Works (1797),
ed. Joseph Warton, vol. II, 285n. Entitled Amatory Lines by Mitford and Northup, Bibliography (1917), 61
.