Ballad, Satire, Pamphlet, or Epigram, on any perfon living or dead? Did I ever do you fo great an injury as to put off my own verfes for yours, especially on thofe Perfons whom they might most offend? I am confident you cannot anfwer in the affirmative; and I can truly affirm, that ever fince I loft the happiness of your converfation, I have not publifhed or written one fyllable of or to either of you; never hitched your names in a Verfe, or trifled with your good names in company. Can I be honestly 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 ftill 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 Ladyfhip are still in bloom; your figures fuch, as rival the Apollo of Belvedere, and the Venus of Medicis; and your faces fo finished, that neither fickness or paffion can deprive them of Colour; I will allow your own in particular to be the finest that ever Man was bleft with: preferve 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 confefs, I am now fomewhat old; but fo your Lordfhip and this excel

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 confequence in the contempt of all fuch as myself. You have both, in my regard, been like-(your Lordship, I know loves a Simile, and it will be one suitable to your Quality)-you have been like Two Princes, and I like a poor Animal facrificed 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 friendfhip as in enmity, The more danger the more honour.

Give me the liberty, my Lord, to tell you, why I never replied to those Verses 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 honest man has the pleasure to be conscious, 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, Honour, or Justice.

But though I declined to explain myself juft 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

Noble one, fo (if your Latin be gone in earnest') I must acquaint you, the word Beatus may be conftrued;

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 constant at the Assemblies 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 lafh, 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 translation 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

All I learn'd from Dr. Freind at school,
Has quite deferted this poor John Trot-head,
And left plain native English in its ftead.
$ Weak texture of his flimfy brain.

Epift. p. 2.

perfonal but to that Fannius, who (with all his fine accomplishments) had never been heard of, but for that Horace he injured.

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 Verse 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 Conversation. Whoever could invent a Falsehood to fupport an accufation, I pity; and whoever can believe such a Character to be theirs, I pity ftill more. God forbid the Court or Town fhould have the complaisance to join in that opinion! Certainly I meant it only of fuch modern Sappho's, as imitate much more the Lewdness than the Genius of the ancient one; and upon whom their wretched brethren frequently beftow both the Name and the Qualification there mentioned t.

There was another reason why I was filent as to that paper-I took it for a Lady's, (on the printer's word in the title page,) and thought it too presuming, as well as indecent, to contend with one of that Sex in altercation: For I never was fo mean a creature as to commit my Anger against a Lady to paper, though

but

From furious Sappho fcarce a milder fate,
Pox'd by her love, or libell'd by her hate.

I Sat. B. ii. HOR.

but in a private Letter. But foon after, her denial of it was brought to me by a Noble perfon of real Honour and Truth. Your Lordfhip indeed faid you had it from a Lady, and the Lady faid it was your Lordship's; fome thought the beautiful by-blow had Two Fathers, or (if one of them will hardly be allowed a man) Two Mothers; indeed I think both Sexes had a fhare in it, but which was uppermost, I know not: I pretend not to determine the exact method of this Witty Fornication: and if I call it Yours, my Lord, it is only becaufe, whoever got it, you brought it forth.

Here, my Lord, allow me to obferve, the different proceeding of the Ignoble Poet, and his Noble Enemies. What he has written of Fanny", Adonis, Sappho, or

who

All the topics of contempt, ridicule, and fatire that are used in this letter againft Lord Hervey, had been ufed before, 1731, by the Author of a Reply to a late Scurrilous Libel; particularly the topics of the delicacy of his manners, and the foppery of his drefs, and effeminacy of his perfon. He is there said, "to be fuch a compofition of the two fexes, that it is difficult to distinguish which is moft predominant." My friend Horace hath described him much better than I can :

"Quem fi puellarum infereres choro,
Mire fagaces falleret hofpites

Difcrimen obfcurum, folutis

Crinibus, ambiguoque vultu."

And it is added, "Though it would be barbarous to handle fuch a delicate hermaphrodite, fuch a pretty little mafter-miss, too roughly, yet you must give me leave, my dear, to give you a little gentle correction for your good." Page 6.

Lord Hervey left behind him Memoirs of his own Times, faid to be full of curious matter, and which it is to be hoped will one day be published, for Hans Stanley told me he had read them.

In