The company at dinner were numerous, including Lady Polwhele and the Asterleys, Mrs. Asterley improved in manners and worldly wisdom by a winter in good society, and by many very sharp reproofs from the Dowager. Little Tom Philter had been bidden, as a man who must be tolerated occasionally, lest he should spit venom at one's fair name in the newspapers. Lady Judith was beginning to be sensitive about seeing her name in print, and was growing monstrously civil to the Grub Street fraternity. She had been written about and hinted at for her high play and her passion for lotteries. She had been the subject--designated by initials--of a ballad headed "_On revient toujours_," and she had been told that Mr. Pope had hit her character off to the life in an essay now in course of composition. The sketch had been read to privileged friends, every word told; her virtues and failings were perpetuated by that unerring touch which made mere words seem as round and fixed and perfect as a statue in marble. This afternoon, while they were dining, she taxed Bolingbroke with having seen and approved the satire. "Dearest Lady Judith, do you think I could approve one word of depreciation, were you the subject?" protested his lordship. "Our little friend certainly showed me some lines--bright, incisive, antithetical, in his usual style; for though he laughs at Hervey's seesaw, he is not himself averse from the false glitter of antithesis--lines descriptive of a modish beauty, Belinda married perhaps; but they could no more represent you than they could embody a goddess. Who can describe the undescribable?" "I am growing accustomed to malevolence," said Judith, "and from little men it gives me no pain. But I have admired Mr. Pope as a wit and a genius, and I should not like to see myself lampooned by him." "I will make him send you the page to-morrow, and it shall be cancelled if you disapprove a single line." "You are always chivalrous. I saw some verses of yours the other day, addressed to some young person who seems to have been not quite a woman of quality; and they are so pretty that I could but regret your lordship had ever ceased to cultivate the Muses." "I have found those famous ladies like other women, dear madam, mightily inconstant. What lines of mine could you have seen, I wonder?" The world-famous statesman, the masterly writer, smiled with the gratified air of a schoolboy scribbler at this praise of his juvenile verses. "O, it was a mere bagatelle, an address to a lady whose Christian name was Clara. The lines had the flavour of youth, and must have been written ages ago. 'Twas the fervid feeling of the prose that pleased me: 'To virtue thus, and to thyself restored, By all admired, by me alone adored, Be to thy Harry ever kind and true, And live for him who more than dies for you.' I hope Clara was worthy of that tender appeal."