Shall be found out for you,
Who, tasting, have robbed the whole tree.
And in 1727 he wrote in Sandys' Ghost:
Ye ladies, too, draw forth your pen,
I pray where can the hurt lie?
Since you have brains as well as men,
As witness Lady Wortley.
Before 1724 Dr. Young had sent her his tragedy The Brothers, requesting her criticism. In 1725 Richard Savage dedicated his Miscellanies to her as one through whose elevated and immortal wit England had been honored, and who had firmly established the fact that women have "strength of mind in proportion to their sweetness." And Henry Fielding, her second cousin, sent her his comedies, "exceedingly anxious" for her opinion of them.
But after 1724 or 1725 the years seem to slip on in an aimless fashion, the only breaks in the monotony coming from the intermittently virulent quarrels with Pope, the religious and medical animosities roused by the inoculation process, family sorrows and family discords, with no literary output to mark any personal achievements. From thirty to fifty should have been harvest years after so brilliant a beginning. But the early promise faded into a middle age disillusioned, unambitious, and rather commonplace. The only writing of any importance was in the correspondence kept up in a desultory fashion with various friends. Such of the letters of this period as have been preserved are so vivid and picturesque, so witty, and so pleasantly caustic in their comment, that we can only regret their small number. Take for instance the following description of a feminine riot in the House of Commons: