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 manner.  I can assure you (in particular) you named a lady to me (as abused in this libel) whose name I never heard before, and as I never had any acquaintance with Dr. Swift am an utter stranger to all his affairs and even his person, which I never saw to my knowledge, and am now convinced the whole is a contrivance of Pope’s to blast the reputation of one who never injured him.  I am not more sensible of his injustice, than I am, sir, of your [sic] candour, generosity, and good sense I have found in you, which has obliged me to be with a very uncommon warmth your real friend, and I heartily wish for an opportunity of showing I am so more effectually than by subscribing myself your very

“Humble servant.”

Whether, in spite of her denial, Lady Mary had a hand in A Pop upon Pope cannot be said; but it is certainly safe to believe that the following lines were written by her, in conjunction, the gossip of the day had it, with Lord Hervey, with some assistance from Mr. Wyndham, then tutor to the Duke of Cumberland: 

  “VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE IMITATOR OF THE FIRST SATIRE OF THE
  SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.

  By a Lady

  “Nor thou the justice of the world disown. 
   That leaves thee thus an outcast and alone: 
   For though in law the murder be to kill,
   In equity the murder is the will. 
   Then while with coward hand you stab a name,
   And try at least to assassinate our fame,
   Like the first bold assassin be thy lot,
   Ne’er be thy guilt forgiven or forgot;
   But as thou hat’st by hatred by mankind,
   And with the emblem of thy crooked mind
   Marked on thy back, like Cain, by God’s own hand,
   Wander like him accursed through the land.”