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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
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