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Folio, pp. 8; disbound. First edition. 'The most famous of attacks on Pope and perhaps the only one where Pope has found a worthy adversary' (Guerinot). Pope's friendship with Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, one of the cleverest women of her day, began in 1716, shortly before she left London to accompany her husband on his embassy to Constantinople; for some time she and Pope were frequent correspondents, but in the end their friendship faltered, for reasons even now not fully understood. 'By 1729, when he referred contemptuously to her in the Dunciad, her relations with Pope had seriously deteriorated, possibly because she had mockingly rejected a passionate declaration of love on his part some years earlier. A period of increasingly scurrilous literary enmity followed in lampoons and satire, to which other pamphleteers contributed. 'Although she never acknowledged it, it was widely assumed from the beginning that she was the co-author with Lord Hervey (Pope's 'Sporus') of Verses Address'd to the Imitator' (Lonsdale, Eighteenth Century Women Poets, p. 55). The poem mocks Pope for failing to grasp the essence of the poem by Horace he had chosen to imitate. The ending, however, dwells on his physical deformity rather than his ability as a poet, and is particularly cruel: Like the first bold Assassin's be thy lot, Ne'er be thy Guilt forgiven, or forgot; But as thou hate'st, be hated by Mankind, And with the Emblem of thy crooked Mind, Mark'd on thy back, like Cain, by God's own Hand; Wander like him, accursed through the Land. (p. 8) Lady Mary had an aristocrat's disdain for publication, and her poems circulated chiefly in manuscript: the circumstances by which these verses came to be printed are still a matter of conjecture. The original printing is identifiable by the reading 'distinction' in the last line of page 4 (as opposed to 'Distinction'); a second edition is partly from the same setting of type (the inner forme of sheet B is retained, but the rest is reset). Guerinot, pp. 224-6; Foxon V39.