n
translated them, and Pope had proclaimed that they were borrowed from a
published translation. The account is false, and the pretended extract
from the letter may be itself apocryphal, for its authenticity is
guaranteed by no external testimony. The similarity of paper and
handwriting, coupled with the pressing necessity Pope was under to
supply himself with examples of fabrication, strongly indicate that the
person who profited by the imposition contrived it.

Pope affirmed in his preface that the two letters ascribed to Atterbury
had never been seen by the bishop or himself, and to show the absurdity
of the fraud he adds that "they were advertised even after that period
when it was made felony to correspond with him." At length, in 1739, one
of the letters was adopted in a reprint of Cooper's octavos, and
undoubtedly by the order of the poet himself, since it was included in
the collection he delivered to Warburton. "We have ventured," says a
note in the Cooper edition, "to insert this letter, which was plainly
intended for Mr. Pope, though we are informed that on second thoughts it
was not judged proper to send it him. A copy was preserved and published
soon after in the English additions to Bayle's Dictionary, under the
article of Atterbury." Pope's assertion, in the preface to the quarto,
that the letter was fabricated, was either a reckless charge or a
falsehood, and there are strong grounds for believing that he was all
along aware that the letter was genuine. In the catalogue of
surreptitious editions we are told of Curll's second volume that it has
no letters to Mr. Pope, "but one said to be Bishop Atterbury's, and
another in that bishop's name, certainly not his." The distinction drawn
between the two amounts to an admission that the former might be
authentic; and this is confirmed in the conclusion of the catalogue,
where a reprint of the P.T. collection is described as containing the
"forged letter," not letters, "from the Bishop of Rochester," though
this very reprint contained them both. They were introduced into all the
reprints themselves in a manner which showed that they were not
considered of equal authority. In Curll's work, they are represented to
be alike by Atterbury, and to be addressed alike to Pope. In the
reprints of the P. T. collection, the letter which Pope ultimately
accepted is alone given as written by Atterbury, or addressed to the
poet. Its fellow has asterisks to represent the perso