e might,
without exaggeration, be called a 'long disease,' should defend himself
by the natural weapons of the weak, equivocation and subterfuge, when
exposed to the brutal horseplay common in that day, is indeed not
surprising. But Pope's delight in artifice was something unparalleled.
He could hardly drink tea without 'a stratagem,' or, as Lady Bolingbroke
put it, was a politician about cabbages and turnips; and certainly he
did not despise the arts known to politicians on a larger stage. Never,
surely, did all the arts of the most skilful diplomacy give rise to a
series of intrigues more complex than those which attended the
publication of the 'P. T. Letters.' An ordinary man says that he is
obliged to publish by request of friends, and we regard the transparent
device as, at most, a venial offence. But in Pope's hands this simple
trick becomes a complex apparatus of plots within plots, which have only
been unravelled by the persevering labours of most industrious literary
detectives. The whole story was given for the first time at full length
in Mr. Elwin's edition of Pope, and the revelation borders upon the
incredible. How Pope became for a time two men; how in one character he
worked upon the wretched Curll through mysterious emissaries until the
piratical bookseller undertook to publish the letters already privately
printed by Pope himself; how Pope in his other character protested
vehemently against the publication and disavowed all complicity in the
preparations; how he set the House of Lords in motion to suppress the
edition; and how, meanwhile, he took ingenious precautions to frustrate
the interference which he provoked; how in the course of these
manoeuvres his genteel equivocation swelled into lying on the most
stupendous scale--all this story, with its various ins and outs, may be
now read by those who have the patience. The problem may be suggested to
casuists how far the iniquity of a lie should be measured by its
immediate purpose, or how far it is aggravated by the enormous mass of
superincumbent falsehoods which it inevitably brings in its train. We
cannot condemn very seriously the affected coyness which tries to
conceal a desire for publication under an apparent yielding to
extortion; but we must certainly admit that the stomach of any other
human being of whom a record has been preserved would have revolted at
the thought of wading through such a waste of falsification to secure so
paltry an end.