Writer. I therefore make this humble request to your Lordship, that the next time you please to write of me, Speak of me, or even whisper of me, you will recollect it is full eight Years fince I had the honour of any conversation or correspondence with your Lordship, except just half an hour in a Lady's Lodgings at Court, and then I had the happiness of her being prefent all the time. It would therefore be difficult even for your Lordship's penetration to tell, to what, or from what Principles, Parties, or Sentiments, Moral, Political, or Theological, I may have been converted, or perverted in all that time. I beseech your Lordship to consider the injury a Man of your high Rank and Credit may do to a private Perfon, under Penal Laws and many other disadvantages, not for want of honesty or confcience, but merely perhaps for having too weak a head, or too tender a heart. It is by thefe alone I have hitherto lived excluded from all. pofts of Profit or Trust: As I can interfere with the Views of no man, do not deny me, my Lord, all that is left, a little Praife, or the common Encouragement due, if not to my Genius, at least to my Industry.

Above all, your Lordship will be careful not to wrong my Moral Character with THOSE under

The whisper, that, to greatness still too near, "Perhaps yet vibrates on his Sov'reign's ear."

r

whofe

Epift. to Dr. ARBUTHNOT.
See Letters to Bishop ATTERBURY, Lett. iv.
The K. and Q.

whofe Protection I live, and through whofe Lenity alone I can live with Comfort. Your Lordship, I, am confident, upon confideration will think, you inadvertently went a little too far when you reccommended to THEIR perufal, and ftrengthened by the weight of your Approbation, a Libel, mean in its reflections upon my poor figure, and fcandalous in those on my Honour and Integrity: wherein I was reprefented as "an Enemy to Human Race, a Murderer "of Reputations, and a Monster marked by God "like Cain, deferving to wander accurfed through "the world."

A strange Picture of a Man, who had the good fortune to enjoy many friends, who will be always remembered as the first ornaments of their Age and Country; and no Enemies that ever contrived to be heard of, except Mr. John Dennis, and your Lordfhip: A Man, who never wrote a line in which the Religion or Government of his Country, the Royal Family, or their Ministry, were disrespectfully mentioned; the Animofity of any one Party gratified at the expence of another; or any Cenfure past, but upon known Vice, acknowledged Folly, or aggreffing Impertinence. It is with infinite pleasure he finds, that fome Men, who feem afhamed and afraid of nothing elfe, are so very fenfible of his Ridicule: And it is for that very reafon he refolves (by the God, and your Lordship's good leave)

Е Б 3

grace of

That,

That, while he breathes, no rich or noble knave Shall walk the world in credit to his grave. This, he thinks, is rendering the best Service he can to the Public, and even to the good Government of his Country; and for this, at least, he may deferve fome Countenance, even from the GREATEST PERSONS in it. Your Lordfhip knows of WHOM I speak. Their NAMES I fhall be as forry, and as much ashamed to place near yours, on fuch an occasion, as I fhould be to fee You, my Lord, placed fo near their PERSONS, if you could ever make fo ill an Use of their Ear as to afperfe or misreprefent any innocent

man.

This is all I fhall ever afk of your Lordship, except your pardon for this tedious Letter. I have the honour to be, with equal Refpect and Concern,

My Lord,

Your truly devoted Servant,

A. POPE.

.

NOTWITHSTANDING Pope's violent agitation and anger against Lord Hervey, it is pleafing to see him pay a handsome compliment to his old acquaintance, Lady Hervey: "That Lady, whom your Lordship made choice of to be the mother of your own children; whose merit, beauty, and vivacity, if tranfmitted to your pofterity, will be a better present than even the noble blood they derive from you."

"Clofe at the ear of Eve." Ep. to Dr. ARBUTHNOT.

She

She had by Lord Hervey four fons and four daughters. Caroline, the youngest daughter, is mentioned by Churchill, as amply inheriting her mother's "merit, beauty, and vivacity.” "That face, that form, that dignity, that ease,

Those pow'rs of pleasing, with that will to please ;
By which LEPELL, when in her youthful days,
Ev'n from the currish POPE extorted praise,

We fee tranfmitted in her daughter fhine,

And view a new LEPELL in CAROLINE."

That her wit and vivacity remained, when her bloom of beauty was paft, will appear from the following original Letter from her to Dodington, which I offer as a curiosity :

"Paris, Oct. 7th, 1755.

"I did not venture to write to you till I could tell you with certainty that my journey was fixed, &c. If you will fend the Porpus, or the ambling Dolphin (for I do not chufe the Whales), I shall prefer them to the Packet boat, &c.

"I heard last month from Mr. Morris, who is charmed with your house, with yourself, and with your reception of him. You have, by your kindness to him, very effectually obliged two very honeft, fincere, and infignificant people.

"I received a few days ago, with the greatest pleasure, the news of our friend Mr. Fox's being in the fituation I have so long wished for him. I believe you will be as much pleased with it as I am; and I am sure there is nothing he defires more, than that you 'fhould be fo: his future fituation must chiefly depend on the fuccefs of his first act of administration, the fupport of the fubfidies to Ruffia and Heffe-Caffel; the chief, nay, probably, the only queftion of dispute this Seffions. Whoever therefore wishes him well, muft and will join him in the support of that measure. Judge, therefore, how much I defire to hear you will be of that number, &c.

"I hope at my return I fhall have the fatisfaction of seeing all these things go on as I wifh, and the pleasure of often giving a little dinner to a small but chofen company, of which you can eafily guess two. What you need not guess, but be fure of, is the truth, efteem, and regard, with which I am, dear Sir,

"Your very faithful and obedient humble fervant."

THAT the reader may judge of the fpirit of fatirical abufe, which called forth this indignant reply, I have thought it best to infert the moft material parts; from which he will be enabled to see, at one view, the force of the Anfwer to the several paffages. It should be remembered, that Pope was the aggreffor (notwithstanding what he says) in satirifing Lord H. as Lord Fanny, and Lady M. W. Montagu as Sappho :

VERSES addreffed to the Imitator of the firft Satire of the fecond Book of Horace.

"In two large columns on thy motley page,
Where Roman wit is ftrip'd with English rage;
Where ribaldry to fatire makes pretence,

And modern fcandal rolls with ancient sense:
Whilst on one fide we fee how Horace thought;
And on the other how he never wrote:

Who can believe, who view the bad, the good,
That the dull copyist better understood
That spirit, he pretends to imitate,

Than heretofore that Greek he did translate?

"Thine is just fuch an image of his pen,
As thou thyfelf art of the fons of men :
Where our own species in burlesque we trace,
A fign-poft likeness of the human race;
That is at once resemblance and disgrace.

"Horace can laugh, is delicate, is clear,
You only coarsely rail, or darkly fneer:
His ftyle is elegant, his diction pure,

Whilft none thy crabbed numbers can endure ;
Hard as thy heart, and as thy birth obfcure.-

"Then whilft with coward hand you stab a name,
And try at least t' affaffinate our fame,
Like the first bold affaffins be thy lot,
Ne'er be thy guilt forgiven, or forgot;

But as thou hat'ft, be hated by mankind,

}

And with the emblem of thy crooked mind,

Mark'd on thy back, like Cain, by God's own hand,
Wander, like him, accurfed through the land.”

Extract