The great charm of Pompey the Little to contemporaries was, of course, the fact that it was supposed to be a roman a clef.  The Countess of Bute hastened to send out a copy of it to her mother in Italy, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu did not hesitate to discover the likenesses of various dear friends of hers.  She found it impossible to go to bed till she had finished it.  She was charmed, and she tells Lady Bute, what the curious may now read with great satisfaction, that it was “a real and exact representation of life, as it is now acted in London.”  What is odd is that Lady Mary identified, with absolute complacency, the portrait of herself, as Mrs. Qualmsick, that hysterical lady with whom “it was not unusual for her to fancy herself a Glass bottle, a Tea-pot, a Hay-rick, or a Field of Turnips.”  Instead of being angry, Lady Mary screamed with laughter at the satire of her own whimsies, of how “Red was too glaring for her eyes; Green put her in Mind of Willows, and made her melancholic; Blue remembered her of her dear Sister, who had died ten Years before in a blue Bed.”  In fact, all this fun seems, for the moment at least, to have cured the original Mrs. Qualmsick of her whimsies, and her remarks on Pompey the Little are so good-natured that we may well forgive her for the pleasure with which she recognised Lady Townshend in Lady Tempest and the Countess of Orford in the pedantic and deistical Lady Sophister, who rates the physicians for their theology, and will not be bled by any man who accepts the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

Coventry’s romance does not deserve the entire neglect into which it has fallen.  It is sprightly and graceful from the first page to the last.  Not written, indeed, by a man of genius, it is yet the work of a very refined observer, who had been modern enough to catch the tone of the new school of novelists.  The writer owes much to Fielding, who yet does not escape without a flap from one of Pompey’s silken ears.  Coventry’s manner may be best exemplified by one of his own bright passages of satire.  This notion of a man of quality, that no place can be full that is not crowded with people of fashion, is not new, but it is deliciously expressed.  Aurora has come back from Bath, and assures the Count that she has had a pleasant season there: 

“’You amaze me,” cries the Count; ’Impossible, Madam!  How can it be, Ladies?  I had Letters from Lord Monkeyman and Lady Betty Scornful assuring me that, except yourselves, there were not three human Creatures in the Place.  Let me see, I have Lady Betty’s Letter in my Pocket, I believe, at this Moment.  Oh no, upon Recollection, I put it this morning into my Cabinet, where I preserve all my Letters of Quality.’ Aurora, smothering a Laugh as well as she could, said she was extremely obliged to Lord Monkeyman and Lady Betty, for vouchsafing to rank her and her Sister in the Catalogue of human Beings.