void being taxed with the proceeding, and to
throw it upon somebody else, favours the belief that he repeated the
deception in 1735 with the same intention; and if the various facts
connected with the publication unite to prove with accumulative force
that he was the sole contriver of it, there is the further argument that
no other person had the slightest interest in perpetrating the act. "The
numbers," says Dr. Johnson, "offered to sale by the private messengers,
showed that the hope of gain could not have been the motive to the
impression." Money was so little the object that a parcel of the books
was sent to Lintot, "for which no price was ever demanded, as he had
made known his resolution not to pay a porter, and consequently not to
deal with a nameless agent."[86] Any person in the employment of Lord
Oxford, who had access to the papers, and was competent to transcribe
them, would not have undergone the toil, and risked detection, disgrace,
and ruin for the sake of a few pounds which he must have shared with his
accomplice Smythe. The vaunted revenge of P. T. could not have been the
motive; for beyond the empty profession, it was belied alike by his
words and deeds. The poet in truth loved himself too well to be able to
counterfeit speciously the part of a hater. P. T. published the letters
which Pope meant to be published; he lauded Pope in Pope's own strain;
he took the measures which were most to Pope's advantage; he reflected
Pope's vanities, weaknesses, and falsehoods, and behaved throughout in a
manner as identical with Pope's position as it was remote from his own.
Lucre and revenge were propensities to which P. T. was a stranger,
though he aspired to a reputation for the latter, and the only passion
apparent in his conduct is his mania to gratify by dishonesty and deceit
the literary ambition of Pope.

"The engineer was hoist with his own petard," and Curll, the intended
victim, had the satisfaction of being the executioner. The poet plainly
considered him to be a scoundrel whom he had a right to damage by any
means, foul or fair. Walter Scott believed that his inveterate
persecutor administered the emetic to him, and extraordinary as it may
seem that a celebrated man of letters should adopt this method of
punishing an obnoxious bookseller, the language of Pope obliges us to
accept the conclusion[87]. The trick was puerile and degrading, but it
inflicted no injury. The prosecution in the House of Lords, and