Thus Pope in the First Dialogue of the Epilogue to the Satires. The reference to forswearing a debt, is, of course, to the Rémond business; "who starves a sister" is an allusion to Lady Mary and Lady Mar.[6]
[Footnote 6: See p. 200 of this work.]
Pope returned to the attack again and again. In The Satires of Dr. John Donne Versified, he inserted the following lines, although there is nothing in the original to warrant the stroke at Lady Mary:
"Yes, thank my stars! as early as I knew
This town, I had the sense to hate it too:
Yet here, as e'en in hell, there must be still
One giant vice, so excellently ill.
That all beside, one pities, not abhors:
As who knows Sappho, smiles at other whores."
Again, in the Epistle to Martha Blount:
"As Sappho's diamonds with her dirty smock;
Or Sappho at her toilet's greasy task,
With Sappho radiant at an evening mask."
Pope would not admit that he alluded to Lady Mary as Sappho, but everyone realised that this was so. Lady Mary, much distressed, begged Lord Peterborough to urge Pope to refrain. The mission was undertaken reluctantly, and the result was scarcely satisfactory. "He said to me," Lord Peterborough wrote to Lady Mary, "what I had taken the liberty of saying to you, that he wondered how the town would apply these lines to any but some noted common woman; that he would yet be more surprised if you should take them to yourself; he named to me four remarkable poetesses and scribblers, Mrs. Centlivre, Mrs. Heywood, Mrs. Manley, and Mrs. Behn, assuring me that such only were the objects of his satire."
Much upset, Lady Mary wrote the following letter to Arbuthnot:
January 3 [1735].
"Sir,