tion were perpetual jokes to him,
exceeding despicable in his opinion, and he has often made us laugh in
talking of them, being particularly pleasant on that subject. As to
Pope's being born of honest parents, I verily believe it, and will add
one praise to his mother's character, that (though I only knew her very
old) she always appeared to me to have much better sense than himself. I
desire, sir, as a favour, that you would show this letter to Pope, and
you will very much oblige, sir,

"Your humble servant."

Lady Mary was not a person, after severe chastisement, to turn the other
cheek, and Pope was well aware of it. He believed that more than one
social satire upon him came from her pen; and he especially suspected
her of having written, or anyhow of having had a hand in the composition
of _A Pop upon Pope_, in which an account was given of a whipping in Ham
Walk which was said to have been administered to him. The poet was so
furious--he regarded it as an indirect attack on his physical deformity,
of which he was always so conscious--that he actually inserted an
announcement in the papers that no such incident had ever occurred--
thereby drawing yet more attention to the lampoon. "You may be certain I
shall never reply to such a libel as Lady Mary's," he wrote to
Fortescue. "It is a pleasure and comfort at once to find out that with
so much mind as so much malice must have to accuse or blacken my
character, it can fix upon no one ill or immoral thing in my life and
must content itself to say, my poetry is dull and my person ugly."

Lady Mary, in a letter to Arbuthnot, denied the authorship of _A Pop
upon Pope_:

"Sir,

"Since I saw you I have made some inquiries, and heard more, of the
story you was so kind to mention to me. I am told Pope has had the
surprising impudence to assert he can bring the lampoon when he pleases
to produce it, under my own hand; I desire he may be made to keep to
this offer. If he is so skilful in counterfeiting hands, I suppose he
will not confine that great talent to the gratifying his malice, but
take some occasion to increase his fortune by the same method, and I may
hope (by such practices) to see him exalted according to his merit,
which nobody will rejoice at more than myself. I beg of you, sir (as an
act of justice), to endeavour to set the truth in an open light, and
then I leave to your judgment the character of those who have attempted
to hurt mine in so barbarous a m