d Curll immediately
reprinted it in the second volume of Mr. Pope's Literary Correspondence,
accompanied by a scornful account of Pope's interference. Pope did not
venture to accept the taunting challenge. His vapouring ceased when he
was dared to fight. He menaced the publisher of a newspaper, who would
not brave a trial in a cause which was not his own, and tamely retreated
before the real offender in person.

The octavo edition of 1737 enables us to put the veracity of Pope in
repudiating the P. T. collection to yet another proof. In May and July,
1735, he published advertisements protesting that several letters
ascribed to him in the P. T. volume were not his.[118] He prefixed to
the octavo of 1737 a catalogue of surreptitious editions, in which he
repeated that the P. T. publication "contained several letters not
genuine."[119] He had hitherto been loud in exclaiming against the P. T.
forgeries without being imprudent enough to name them. His caution
relaxed as time wore on, and he had the courage to state on the
title-page of the first octavo edition of 1737 that he had "added to the
letters of the author's own edition all that are genuine from the former
impressions." The spurious letters in the P. T. collection were thus
declared to be the letters which were excluded from the octavo edition
of 1737. They were seven in number. Three were letters, or extracts of
letters, from Wycherley, two belonged to the section headed "Letters to
Several Ladies," and two were letters to Gay. Unless they were really
forgeries, Pope told and retold emphatic lies to discredit the P. T.
collection, and establish his innocence, and the deceit would leave no
doubt of his criminality.

Four letters out of the seven we know to have been genuine. The three
letters of Wycherley were on the sheets transferred from the edition of
his posthumous works which was published by Pope, and copies of two of
them are among the Oxford papers. One of the suppressed letters to
ladies exists in duplicate, and was sent by Pope to Miss Blount, and to
Miss Marriot, the friend and neighbour of his coadjutor Broome. The
letters are both originals in the handwriting of Pope. There are no
means of verifying the remaining three letters, nor is it necessary to
test them, when more than half the pretended forgeries are found to be
authentic. Once again we have absolute evidence that his accusation of
forgery was an acted clamour to screen himself. He finally ad