These sweet and musical lines, which fall on the ear with such a lulling harmony, are dashed with discord when we remember that the same woman who inspired them, was afterwards malignantly and coarsely designated as the Sappho of his satires. The generous heart never coolly degraded and insulted what it has once loved; but Pope _could_ not be magnanimous,--it was not in his spiteful nature to forgive. He says of himself, Whoe'er offends, at some unlucky time Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme.[134] One of Pope's biographers[135] seems to insinuate, that he had been led on, by the lady's coquetry, to presume too far, and in consequence received a repulse, which he never forgave. This is not probable: Pope was not likely to be so desperate or dangerous an admirer; nor was Lady Mary, who had written with her diamond ring on a window, Let this great maxim be my virtue's guide: In part, she is to blame that has been tried,-- He comes too near, that comes to be denied!-- at all likely to expose herself to such ridiculous audacity. The truth is, I rather imagine, that there was a great deal of vanity on both sides; that the lady was amused and flattered, and the poet bewitched and in earnest: that _she_ gave the first offence by some pointed sarcasm or personal ridicule, in which she was an adept, and that Pope, gradually awakened from his dream of adoration, was stung to the quick by her laughing scorn, and mortified and irritated by the consciousness of his wasted attachment. He makes this confession with extreme bitterness,-- Yet soft by nature, more a dupe than wit, Sappho can tell you how this man was bit. _Prologue to the Satires._ The lines as they stand in a first edition are even more pointed and significant, and have much more asperity. Once, and but once, his heedless youth was bit, And liked that dangerous thing, a female wit. Safe as he thought, though all the prudent chid, He wrote no libels, but _my lady_ did; Great odds in amorous or poetic game, Where woman's is the _sin_, and man's the _shame_! The result was a deadly and interminable feud. Lady Mary might possibly have inflicted the first private offence, but Pope gave the first public affront. A man who, under such circumstances, could grossly satirize a female, would, in a less civilized state of society, have revenged himself with a blow. The brutality and cowardice were the same. The war of words did not, however, proceed at once to such extremity; the first indication of Pope's revolt from his sworn allegiance, and a conscious hint of the secret cause, may be found in some lines addressed to a lady poetess,[136] to whom he pays a compliment at Lady Mary's expense.