Johnson,--an inadequate appreciation of clean linen.
More malignant accusations are implied both in his acknowledged and
anonymous writings. The most ferocious of all his assaults, however, is
the character of Sporus, that is Lord Hervey, in the epistle to
Arbuthnot, where he seems to be actually screaming with malignant fury.
He returns the taunts as to effeminacy, and calls his adversary a "mere
white curd of asses' milk,"--an innocent drink, which he was himself in
the habit of consuming.
We turn gladly from these miserable hostilities, disgraceful to all
concerned. Were any excuse available for Pope, it would be in the
brutality of taunts, coming not only from rough dwellers in Grub Street,
but from the most polished representatives of the highest classes, upon
personal defects, which the most ungenerous assailant might surely have
spared. But it must also be granted that Pope was neither the last to
give provocation, nor at all inclined to refrain from the use of
poisoned weapons.
The other connexion of which I have spoken has also its mystery,--like
everything else in Pope's career. Pope had been early acquainted with
Teresa and Martha Blount. Teresa was born in the same year as Pope, and
Martha two years later.[12] They were daughters of Lister Blount, of
Mapledurham, and after his death, in 1710, and the marriage of their
only brother, in 1711, they lived with their mother in London, and
passed much of the summer near Twickenham. They seem to have been lively
young women, who had been educated at Paris.
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