He believed that more than one social satire upon him came from her pen; and he especially suspected her of having written, or anyhow of having had a hand in the composition of _A Pop upon Pope_, in which an account was given of a whipping in Ham Walk which was said to have been administered to him.

The poet was so furious--he regarded it as an indirect attack on his physical deformity, of which he was always so conscious--that he actually inserted an announcement in the papers that no such incident had ever occurred-- thereby drawing yet more attention to the lampoon.

"You may be certain I shall never reply to such a libel as Lady Mary's," he wrote to Fortescue.

"It is a pleasure and comfort at once to find out that with so much mind as so much malice must have to accuse or blacken my character, it can fix upon no one ill or immoral thing in my life and must content itself to say, my poetry is dull and my person ugly." Lady Mary, in a letter to Arbuthnot, denied the authorship of _A Pop upon Pope_: "Sir, "Since I saw you I have made some inquiries, and heard more, of the story you was so kind to mention to me.

I am told Pope has had the surprising impudence to assert he can bring the lampoon when he pleases to produce it, under my own hand; I desire he may be made to keep to this offer.