to him which he did not write, and specifies
examples, none of which appeared in the book sold to Curll. He says that
the piratical editions contain various passages "which no man of common
sense would have printed himself," and this he could assert with truth,
because the greater part of the Cromwell series owed their publicity to
Mrs. Thomas alone. He declares that he had not authorised any of the
surreptitious impressions, but forbore to allege that the primitive
impression was surreptitious, and shunned all allusion to its birth and
parentage. He laments the need which exists for his own volume, and when
he proceeds "to state the case fairly in the present situation," none of
his reasons appertain to the work of P. T. He indulges in general
declamation upon the enormity of procuring letters by disreputable
contrivances, but carefully avoids affirming that any of those which
first saw the light in 1735 were obtained in the manner he deprecates.
He assures us, indeed, that his epistolary effusions are "emanations of
the heart, and not efforts of genius," and adds, "this alone may induce
any candid reader to believe their publication an act of necessity
rather than vanity," which honestly interpreted implies that he was not
the person who originally sent them to the press. The candid writer,
however, omitted to inform the candid reader of the pains he had taken
to render them worthy of his head as well as of his heart, and the
falsification of the premises destroys the credibility of the inference.
The silence of Pope upon the P. T. collection is, under the
circumstances, equivalent to a confession of guilt. He gives an account
of the surreptitious publication of his letters to Cromwell. He states
the reason of the publication of his letters to Wycherley. He reverts
once and again to what he justly called the sham volumes of Curll. He
records the minutest wrong he can detect in the execution of any of the
hostile schemes. But though the conduct of P. T. was the most flagrant
of all; though the poet was believed to be the contriver of the plot,
and his enemies taunted him with the fraud; though he professed to have
learnt the details of the mystery, and half a dozen sentences, if he was
innocent, would have set him right with both friends and foes; though
the collection of 1735 was in its nature and extent far more important
than the rest, and though it was the basis and primary cause of the
edition he was ushering into