wrote Gay; and indeed, on April 21, as Lord Bristol's diary records, they had been privately married. On October 28 the marriage was announced. Three years later, on the death of his elder brother, the husband became Lord Hervey. At the beginning of George II.'s reign he attached himself to Walpole and his Administration. From that time, if not before, until her death, he was essential to Queen Caroline. He came at length to be with her for many hours each day, save for his Saturday and Sunday holiday, of which he writes so slyly; her adviser, gossip, buffoon—in sickness or in health alike indispensable. In the same year Pope dates his own quarrel with him; and he left off his familiarity with Chesterfield and Hervey for the same reason, he says, "merely because they both had too much wit for him." It was soon a pretty squabble, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu did not pour oil on the waters. "Verses to the Imitator of Horace" and "A Letter from a Nobleman at Hampton Court to a Doctor of Divinity" were Hervey's contributions to the fray; and Pope's culminated in the bitter character of Sporus, "that mere white curd of asses' milk." The sharpest personal taunts are joined to political references, stinging alike to the Queen and the favourite.
"Eve's tempter thus the rabbins have express'd:—
A cherub's face—a reptile all the rest!
Beauty that shocks you, parts than none can trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust."
