This is so uncommon an Instance, of your checking your Temper and taking a little Shame to yourself, that I could not in Justice omit my Notice of it. I am of opinion too, that the Indecency of the next Verse, you spill upon me, would admit of an equal Correction. In excusing the Freedom of your Satyr, you urge that it galls no body, because nobody minds it enough to be mended by it. This is your Plea——
Whom have I hurt! has Poet yet, or Peer,
Lost the arched Eye-brow, or Parnassian Sneer?
And has not Colley too his Lord, and Whore? &c.
If I thought the Christian Name of Colley could belong to any other Man than myself, I would insist upon my Right of not supposing you meant this last Line to Me; because it is equally applicable to five thousand other People: But as your Good-will to me is a little too well known, to pass it as imaginable that you could intend it for any one else, I am afraid I must abide it.
Well then! Colley has his Lord and Whore! Now suppose, Sir, upon the same Occasion, that Colley as happily inspired as Mr. Pope, had turned the same Verse upon Him, and with only the Name changed had made it run thus—
And has not Sawney too his Lord and Whore?
Would not the Satyr have been equally just? Or would any sober Reader have seen more in the Line, than a wide mouthful of Ill-Manners? Or would my professing myself a Satyrist give me a Title to wipe my foul Pen upon the Face of every Man I did not like? Or would my Impudence be less Impudence in Verse than in Prose? or in private Company? What ought I to expect less, than that you would knock me down for it? unless the happy Weakness of my Person might be my Protection? Why then may I not insist that Colley or Sawney in the Verse would make no Difference in the Satyr! Now let us examine how far there would be Truth in it on either Side.
As to the first Part of the Charge, the Lord; Why—we have both had him, and sometimes the same Lord; but as there is neither Vice nor Folly in keeping our Betters Company; the Wit or Satyr of the Verse! can only point at my Lord for keeping such ordinary Company. Well, but if so! then why so, good Mr. Pope? If either of us could be good Company, our being professed Poets, I hope would be no Objection to my Lord’s sometimes making one with us? and though I don’t pretend to write like you, yet all the Requisites to make a good Companion are not confined to Poetry! No, Sir, even a Man’s inoffensive Follies and Blunders may sometimes have their Merits at the best Table; and in those, I am sure, you won’t pretend to vie with me: Why then may not my Lord be as much in the Right, in his sometimes choosing Colley to laugh at, as at other times in his picking up Sawney, whom he can only admire?
Thus far, then, I hope we are upon a par; for the Lord, you see, will fit either of us.
As to the latter Charge, the Whore, there indeed, I doubt you will have the better of me; for I must own, that I believe I know more of your whoring than you do of mine; because I don’t recollect that ever I made you the least Confidence of my Amours, though I have been very near an Eye-Witness of Yours——By the way, gentle Reader, don’t you think, to say only, a Man has his Whore, without some particular Circumstances to aggravate the Vice, is the flattest Piece of Satyr that ever fell from the formidable Pen of Mr. Pope? because (defendit numerus) take the first ten thousand Men you meet, and I believe, you would be no Loser, if you betted ten to one that every single Sinner of them, one with another, had been guilty of the same Frailty. But as Mr. Pope has so particularly picked me out of the Number to make an Example of: Why may I not take the same Liberty, and even single him out for another to keep me in Countenance? He must excuse me, then, if in what I am going to relate, I am reduced to make bold with a little private Conversation: But as he has shewn no Mercy to Colley, why should so unprovok’d an Aggressor expect any for himself? And if Truth hurts him, I can’t help it. He may remember, then (or if he won’t I will) when Button’s Coffee-house was in vogue, and so long ago, as when he had not translated above two or three Books of Homer; there was a late young Nobleman (as much his Lord as mine) who had a good deal of wicked Humour, and who, though he was fond of having Wits in his Company, was not so restrained by his Conscience, but that he lov’d to laugh at any merry Mischief he could do them: This noble Wag, I say, in his usual Gayetè de Cœur, with another Gentleman still in Being, one Evening slily seduced the celebrated Mr. Pope as a Wit, and myself as a Laugher, to a certain House of Carnal Recreation, near the Hay-Market; where his Lordship’s Frolick propos’d was to slip his little Homer, as he call’d him, at a Girl of the Game, that he might see what sort of Figure a Man of his Size, Sobriety, and Vigour (in Verse) would make, when the frail Fit of Love had got into him; in which he so far succeeded, that the smirking Damsel, who serv’d us with Tea, happen’d to have Charms sufficient to tempt the little-tiny Manhood of Mr. Pope into the next Room with her: at which you may imagine, his Lordship was in as much Joy, at what might happen within, as our small Friend could probably be in Possession of it: But I (forgive me all ye mortified Mortals whom his fell Satyr has since fallen upon) observing he had staid as long as without hazard of his Health he might, I,
Prick’d to it by foolish Honesty and Love,