Let Sporus tremble! what! that thing of silk! Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk! Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel? Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings, This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings; Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys: So well-bred spaniels civilly delight In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. Eternal smiles his emptiness betray As shallow streams run dimpling all the way Whether in florid impotence he speaks And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks; Or, at the ear of Eve, familiar toad Half froth half venom, spits himself abroad: In puns or politics, in tales or lies Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies; His wit all see-saw between that and this, Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, And he himself one vile antithesis. Amphibious thing! that acting either part, The trifling head, or the corrupted heart; Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the Board, Now trips a lady and now struts a lord. Eve’s tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed, A cherub’s face and reptile all the rest; Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. Coxe, alluding to the portrait of Sporus, writes: “I never could read this passage without disgust and horror, disgust at the indelicacy of the allusions, horror at the malignity of the poet in laying the foundation of his abuse on the lowest species of satire, personal invective, and what is still worse, sickness and debility”. This condemnation is true of Pope’s verses on Hervey, but it is equally true of Hervey’s verses on Pope--and it was Hervey who began the personal abuse. Lady Mary did not escape either. Pope depicted her as a wanton, scoffed at her eccentricities, and hinted that she conferred her favours on “a black man,” the Sultan Ahmed of Turkey. [Illustration: JOHN, LORD HERVEY.]