Until the publication of the _Memoirs_ Hervey was chiefly known as the object of savage satire on the part of Pope, in whose works he figured as Lord Fanny, Sporus, Adonis and Narcissus. The quarrel is generally put down to Pope's jealousy of Hervey's friendship with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. In the first of the _Imitations of Horace_, addressed to William Fortescue, "Lord Fanny" and "Sappho" were generally identified with Hervey and Lady Mary, although Pope denied the personal intention. Hervey had already been attacked in the _Dunciad_ and the _Bathos_, and he now retaliated. There is no doubt that he had a share in the _Verses to the Imitator of Horace_ (1732) and it is possible that he was the sole author. In the _Letter from a nobleman at Hampton Court to a Doctor of Divinity_ (1733), he scoffed at Pope's deformity and humble birth. Pope's reply was a _Letter to a Noble Lord_, dated November 1733, and the portrait of Sporus in the _Epistle to Dr Arbuthnot_ (1735), which forms the prologue to the satires. Many of the insinuations and insults contained in it are borrowed from Pulteney's libel. The malicious caricature of Sporus does Hervey great injustice, and he is not much better treated by Horace Walpole, who in reporting his death in a letter (14th of August 1743) to Horace Mann, said he had outlived his last inch of character. Nevertheless his writings prove him to have been a man of real ability, condemned by Walpole's tactics and distrust of able men to spend his life in court intrigue, the weapons of which, it must be owned, he used with the utmost adroitness. His wife Lady Hervey [Molly Lepell] (1700-1768), of whom an account is to be found in Lady Louisa Stuart's _Anecdotes_, was a warm partisan of the Stuarts. She retained her wit and charm throughout her life, and has the distinction of being the recipient of English verses by Voltaire. See Hervey's _Memoirs of the Court of George II._, edited by J. W. Croker (1848); and an article by G. F. Russell Barker in the _Dict. Nat. Biog._ (vol. xxvi., 1891). Besides the _Memoirs_ he wrote numerous political pamphlets, and some occasional verses.