And yet one cannot refuse some pity to the
unfortunate wretch, thus roughly jerked back into the consciousness
that a fine lady might make a pretty plaything of him, but could not
seriously regard him with anything but scorn. Whatever the precise
facts, a breach of some sort might have been anticipated. A game of
gallantry in which the natural parts are inverted, and the gentleman
acts the sentimentalist to the lady's performance of the shrewd cynic,
is likely to have awkward results. Pope brooded over his resentment, and
years afterwards took a revenge only too characteristic. The first of
his Imitations of Horace appeared in 1733. It contained a couplet, too
gross for quotation, making the most outrageous imputation upon the
character of "Sappho." Now, the accusation itself had no relation
whatever either to facts or even (as I suppose) to any existing scandal.
It was simply throwing filth at random. Thus, when Lady Mary took it to
herself, and applied to Pope through Peterborough for an explanation,
Pope could make a defence verbally impregnable. There was no reason why
Lady Mary should fancy that such a cap fitted; and it was far more
appropriate, as he added, to other women notorious for immorality as
well as authorship. In fact, however, there can be no doubt that Pope
intended his abuse to reach its mark. Sappho was an obvious name for the
most famous of poetic ladies. Pope himself, in one of his last letters
to her, says that fragments of her writing would please him like
fragments of Sappho's; and their mediator, Peterborough, writes of her
under the same name in some complimentary and once well-known verses to
Mrs.
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