Impertinent schools,
With musty dull rules,
Have reading to females denied;
So Papists refuse
The Bible to use
Lest flocks should be wise as their guides.
III
Twas woman at first
(Indeed she was curst)
In knowledge that tasted delight,
And sages agree
The laws should decree
To the first possessor the right.
IV
Then bravely, fair dame,
Resume the old claim,
Which to your whole sex does belong;
And let men receive
From a second bright Eve
The knowledge of right and of wrong.
V
But if the first Eve
Hard doom did receive,
When only one apple had she,
What a punishment new
Shall be found out for you,
Who tasting, have robb'd the whole tree!
The acquaintance with Pope began shortly after Lady Mary came to town in the autumn of 1714. It soon developed into friendship. "Lady Mary Wortley," Jervas wrote to the poet, probably in 1715 or early in the following year, "ordered me by express this morning, cedente Gayo et ridente Fortescuvio, to send you a letter, or some other proper notice, to come to her on Thursday about five, which I suppose she meant in the evening."
There appeared in March, 1716, a volume bearing the title Court Poems, the authorship being attributed to "A Lady of Quality," who, it soon became known, was Lady Mary. The book was issued by Roberts, who had received the three sets of verses contained in it from the notorious piratical publisher, Edmund Curll. How the manuscript "fell" into the hands of Curll it is not easy to imagine. Curll's account is that they were found in a pocket-book taken up in Westminster Hall on the last day of the trial of the Jacobite Lord Winton. Anyhow, however it came about, the volume was published in 1716, when it was found to contain "The Basset Table," "The Drawing Room," and "The Toilet."
Curll was an excellent publicity agent for his wares. He wrote, or caused to be written, a most intriguing "advertisement" about the authorship of the poems: