If he is so skilful in counterfeiting hands, I suppose he will not confine that great talent to the gratifying his malice, but take some occasion to increase his fortune by the same method, and I may hope (by such practices) to see him exalted according to his merit, which nobody will rejoice at more than myself.

I beg of you, sir (as an act of justice), to endeavour to set the truth in an open light, and then I leave to your judgment the character of those who have attempted to hurt mine in so barbarous a manner.

I can assure you (in particular) you named a lady to me (as abused in this libel) whose name I never heard before, and as I never had any acquaintance with Dr.Swift am an utter stranger to all his affairs and even his person, which I never saw to my knowledge, and am now convinced the whole is a contrivance of Pope's to blast the reputation of one who never injured him.

I am not more sensible of his injustice, than I am, sir, of your [_sic_] candour, generosity, and good sense I have found in you, which has obliged me to be with a very uncommon warmth your real friend, and I heartily wish for an opportunity of showing I am so more effectually than by subscribing myself your very "Humble servant." Whether, in spite of her denial, Lady Mary had a hand in _A Pop upon Pope_ cannot be said; but it is certainly safe to believe that the following lines were written by her, in conjunction, the gossip of the day had it, with Lord Hervey, with some assistance from Mr.Wyndham, then tutor to the Duke of Cumberland: "VERSES ADDRESSED TO THE IMITATOR OF THE FIRST SATIRE OF THE SECOND BOOK OF HORACE.
_By a Lady_ "Nor thou the justice of the world disown.
That leaves thee thus an outcast and alone: For though in law the murder be to kill, In equity the murder is the will.
Then while with coward hand you stab a name, And try at least to assassinate our fame, Like the first bold assassin be thy lot, Ne'er be thy guilt forgiven or forgot; But as thou hat'st by hatred by mankind, And with the emblem of thy crooked mind Marked on thy back, like Cain, by God's own hand, Wander like him accursed through the land." It was this malignant attack upon his person that inspired Pope's lines in the _Epistle to Arbuthnot_: "Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit, And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit.
Safe, so he thought, though all the prudent chid; He writ no libels, but my lady did; Great odds, in amorous or poetic game, Where woman's is the sin, and man's the shame." With the following extract from a letter written by Lady Mary from Florence in 1740 this unpleasing incident may be dismissed: "The word malignity, and a passage in your letter, call to my mind the wicked wasp of Twickenham: his lies affect me now no more; they will be all as much despised as the story of the seraglio and the handkerchief, of which I am persuaded he was the only inventor.

That man has a malignant and ungenerous heart; and he is base enough to assume the mask of a moralist, in order to decry human nature, and to give a decent vent to his hatred of man and woman kind .-- But I must quit this contemptible subject, on which a just indignation would render my pen so fertile, that after having fatigued you with a long letter, I would surfeit you with a supplement twice as long." At Twickenham Lady Mary interested herself in planning alterations in the house and gardens.