This affectation
offended Lady Mary, whose _mot_, that there were three species, 'Men,
women, and Herveys'--implies a perfect perception of the eccentricities
even of her gifted friend, Lord Hervey, whose mother's friend she had
been, and the object of whose admiration she undoubtedly was.
Pope, who was the most irritable of men, never forgot or forgave even
the most trifling offence. Lady Bolingbroke truly said of him that he
played the politician about cabbages and salads, and everybody agrees
that he could hardly tolerate the wit that was more successful than his
own. It was about the year 1725, that he began to hate Lord Hervey with
such a hatred as only he could feel; it was unmitigated by a single
touch of generosity or of compassion. Pope afterwards owned that his
acquaintance with Lady Mary and with Hervey was discontinued, merely
because they had too much wit for him. Towards the latter end of 1732,
'The Imitation of the Second Satire of the First Book of Horace,'
appeared, and in it Pope attacked Lady Mary with the grossest and most
indecent couplet ever printed: she was called Sappho, and Hervey, Lord
Fanny; and all the world knew the characters at once.
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