The poor little invalid, brutally abused for his deformity by such men as Dennis and his friends, was stung beyond all self-control by their coarse laughter, and by the consciousness that it only echoed, in a more brutal shape, the judgment of the fine ladies of the time.

His language about women, sometimes expressing coarse contempt and sometimes rising to ferocity, is the reaction of his morbid sensibility under such real and imagined scorn.
Such feelings must be remembered in speaking briefly of two love affairs, if they are such, which profoundly affected his happiness.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu is amongst the most conspicuous figures of the time.

She had been made a toast at the Kitcat Club at the age of eight, and she translated Epictetus (from the Latin) before she was twenty.

She wrote verses, some of them amazingly coarse, though decidedly clever, and had married Mr.Edward Wortley Montagu in defiance of her father's will, though even in this, her most romantic proceeding, there are curious indications of a respect for prudential considerations.