In retaliation for this satire, appeared 'Verses to the Imitator of
Horace;' said to have been the joint production of Lord Hervey and Lady
Mary. This was followed by a piece entitled 'Letter from a Nobleman at
Hampton Court to a Doctor of Divinity.' To this composition Lord Hervey,
its sole author, added these lines, by way, as it seems, of extenuation.
Pope's first reply was in a prose letter, on which Dr. Johnson has
passed a condemnation. 'It exhibits,' he says, 'nothing but tedious
malignity.' But he was partial to the Herveys, Thomas and Henry Hervey,
Lord Hervey's brothers, having been kind to him--'If you call a dog
_Hervey_,' he said to Boswell, 'I shall love him.'
Next came the epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, in which every infirmity and
peculiarity of Hervey are handed down in calm, cruel irony, and polished
verses, to posterity. The verses are almost too disgusting to be
revived in an age which disclaims scurrility. After the most personal
rancorous invective, he thus writes of Lord Hervey's conversation:--
His wit all see-saw between this and _that_--
Now high, now low--now _master_ up, now _miss_--
And he himself one vile antithesis.
* * * * *
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
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