ABSTRACT
Alexander Pope wrote a reply to Hervey's Epistle. His Letter to a Noble Lord was a temperate, even timid, response to the accusations and abuse heaped on him, both by Lady Mary and her ally. After Editha Alexander Pope's funeral her son needed to get away from the house at Twickenham, where he had been pent up. If Alexander Pope was to be listened to when he moralize his song, it was important that he established his credentials as a moralist and seemed to practise what he preached. Alexander Pope's contemptuous innuendos were just another, more vitriolic, contribution to satirical squibs about' Vicey' or the 'Lady of the Lords' that had appeared in the Opposition press. As an artistic creation Sporus is complete, though the picture of the Roman catamite is not a complete account of Lord Hervey. The portrait of Hervey is a hatchet job, one as yet unsurpassed in the language.
