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mine, many things which you could with yours. The injury done you in withdrawing myfelf could be but fmall, if the value you had for me was no greater than you have been pleafed fince to profefs. But furely, my Lord, one may fay, neither the Revenge, nor the Language you held, bore any proportion to the pretended offence: The appellations of Foe to humankind, an Enemy like the Devil to all that have Being; ungrateful, unjust, deferving to be whipt, blanketed, kicked, nay killed: a Monster, an Assassin, whofe converfation every man ought to fhun, and against whom all doors fhould be fhut; I befeech you my Lord, had you the least right to give, or to encourage or justify any other in giving fuch language as this to me? Could I be treated in terms more ftrong or more atrocious, if during my acquaintance with you I had been a Betrayer, a Backbiter, a Whisperer, an Eves-dropper, or an Informer? Did I in all that time ever throw a falfe Dye, or palm a foul Card upon you? Did I ever borrow, fteal, or accept, either Money, Wit, or Advice from you? Had I ever the honour to join with either of you Ballad, Satire, Pamphlet, or Epigram, on any person living or dead? Did I ever do you fo great an Injury as to put off my owm verfes for yours, especially on thofe Perfons whom they might most offend? I am confident you cannot answer in the affirmative; and I can truly affirm, that ever fince I lost the happiness

See the aforefaid Verfes to the Imitator of Horace.

in one

of

of your converfation, I have not published or written one syllable of or to either of you; never hitched

your names in a Verfe, or trifled with your good names in company. Can I be honeftly charged with any other crime but an Omiffion (for the word Neglect, which I used before, flipped my pen unguardedly) to continue my admiration of you all my life, and still to contemplate, face to face, your many excellencies and perfections? I am perfuaded you can reproach me truly with no great Faults, except my natural ones, which I am as ready to own, as to do all justice to the contrary Beauties in you. It is true, my Lord, I am fhort, not well fhaped, generally ill-dreffed, if not fometimes dirty: Your Lordship and Ladyship are ftill in bloom; your Figures fuch, as rival the Apollo of Belvedere, and the Venus of Medicis; and your faces fo finished, that neither ficknefs or paffion can deprive them of Colour; I will allow your own in particular to be the finest that ever Man was blest with: preserve it, my Lord, and reflect, that to be a Critic, would coft it too many frowns, and to be a Statesman, too many wrinkles! I further confess, I am now fomewhat old; but fo your Lordship and this excellent Lady, with all your beauty, will (I hope) one day be. I know your Genius and hers fo perfectly tally, that you cannot but join in admiring each other, and by consequence in the contempt of all fuch as myself. You have both, in my regard, been like

DD 2

like (your Lordship, I know, loves a Simile, and it will be one fuitable to your Quality)—you have been like Two Princes, and I like a poor Animal sacrificed between them to cement a lafting league: I hope I have not bled in vain; but that fuch an amity may endure for ever! For though it be what common understandings would hardly conceive, Two Wits however may be perfuaded that it is in friendship as in enmity, The more danger the more honour.

Give me the liberty, my Lord, to tell you, why I never replied to those Verfes on the Imitator of Horace? They regarded nothing but my Figure, which I fet no value upon; and my Morals, which, I knew, needed no defence: Any honeft man has the pleasure to be confcious, that it is out of the power of the Wittieft, nay the Greatest Perfon in the kingdom, to leffen him that way, but at the expence of his own Truth, Henour, or Justice.

But though I declined to explain myself just at the time when I was fillily threatened, I fhall now give your Lordship a frank account of the offence you imagined to be meant to you. Fanny (my Lord) is the plain English of Fannius, a real perfon, who was a foolish Critic, and an enemy of Horace: perhaps a Noble one, fo (if your Latin be gone in earnest) I

must

• All I learn'd from Dr. Freind at fchool,
Has quite deferted this poor John Trot-head,
And left plain native English in its ftead.

Epift. p. 2.

mu: acquaint you, the word Beatus may be con

fted;

Beatus Fannius! ultro

Delatis capfis et imagine.

This Fannius was, it feems, extremely fond both of his Poetry and his Perfon, which appears by the pictures and Statues he caufed to be made of himself, and by his great diligence to propagate bad Verfes at Court, and get them admitted into the library of Auguftus. He was moreover of a delicate or effeminate complexion, and conftant at the Affemblies and Operas of those days, where he took it into his head to flander poor Horace ;

Ineptus

Fannius, Hermogenis lædat conviva Tigelli;

till it provoked him at last just to name him, give him a lab, and fend him whimpering to the Ladies.

Difcipularum inter jubeo plorare cathedras.

So much for Fanny, my Lord. The word Spins (as Dr. Freind or even Dr. Sherwin could affure you) was the literal tranflation of deduci; a metaphor taken from a Silk-worm, my Lord, to fignify any flight, filken, or (as your Lordship and the Ladies call it) 'flimfy piece of work. I prefume your Lordship has enough of this, to convince you there was nothing perfonal but to that Fannius, who (with all his fine accomplishments) had never been heard of, but for that Horace he injured.

* Weak texture of his flimfy brain.

In

In regard to the right honourable Lady, your Lordship's friend, I was far from defigning a perfon of her condition by a name fo derogatory to her ", as that of Sappho; a name prostituted to every infamous Creature that ever wrote Verfe or Novels. I protest I never applied that name to her in any verse of mine, public or private; (and I firmly believe) not in any Letter or Converfation. Whoever could invent a Falfehood

W

w Pope avers that he was far from defigning a Lady of Lady Mary's condition by a name fo derogatory to her as Sappho; yet that very Sappho is faid to "wear diamonds *;" and he talks of meaning many Sappho's, yet in the Epiftle to Dr. Arbuthnot he

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"Why the and Sappho rofe that monftrous fum." By which quotation, and feveral others, the unity is decided. It therefore remains to ascertain the perfon whom he intended to fatirize; and it would not be difficult to felect many paffages in which Lady Mary is mentioned by name.

Pope says, he himself discontinued her acquaintance, because "She had too much wit for him." The explanatory note to which words, in Warburton's edition, confifts of the following couplet: "Once, and but once, his heedlefs youth was bit,

And lik'd that dang'rous thing, a female wit.”

Pope's avowed reafon for difcontinuing Lady Mary's acquaintance was, therefore, that she had outwitted him; and the truth, by the corrected lines,

"Yet foft by Nature, more a dupe than wit,

Sappho can tell you how this man was bit;"

is moft fairly proved: for if he were outwitted by a female wit, and by Sappho, and yet outwitted but once, Sappho and Lady Mary muft of course be the fame identical perfon.

Dallaway's Memoirs of Lady M. W. Montagu.

* See argument further pursued in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1791, F. 420.

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