"He will certainly play you some devilish trick else: he has an appetite for satire." Lady Mary presently must have wished that she had followed this sage counsel.
When Pope fought, he fought with the gloves off; and not the sex or the age or the standing of the subject of his wrath deterred him a whit.
"Have I, in silent wonder, seen such things As pride in slaves, and avarice in kings; And at a peer, or peeress, shall I fret, Who starves a sister, or forswears a debt ?" Thus Pope in the First Dialogue of the _Epilogue to the Satires._ The reference to forswearing a debt, is, of course, to the Remond business; "who starves a sister" is an allusion to Lady Mary and Lady Mar.[6] [Footnote 6: _See_ p.

200 of this work.] Pope returned to the attack again and again.

In _The Satires of Dr.John Donne Versified_, he inserted the following lines, although there is nothing in the original to warrant the stroke at Lady Mary: "Yes, thank my stars! as early as I knew This town, I had the sense to hate it too: Yet here, as e'en in hell, there must be still One giant vice, so excellently ill.
That all beside, one pities, not abhors: As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores." Again, in the _Epistle to Martha Blount_: "As Sappho's diamonds with her dirty smock; Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task, With Sappho radiant at an evening mask." Pope would not admit that he alluded to Lady Mary as Sappho, but everyone realised that this was so.

Lady Mary, much distressed, begged Lord Peterborough to urge Pope to refrain.

The mission was undertaken reluctantly, and the result was scarcely satisfactory.