ent, says in the reply, which on his return
home he addressed to Pope, "I found a letter from you with an _appendix_
longer than yours from Bolingbroke." The letter and its appendix were
printed by Curll at the period when Pope had exhausted his arguments to
induce Swift to resign the correspondence, and the occurrence was so
well timed for the purposes of the poet, and the device so much in
accordance with his practices, that it is impossible not to suspect that
he contrived the injury as a means of extorting the redress. The
original of his share of the epistle still exists,[130] and shows that
the published version has been edited in his usual fashion. The
variations, in the aggregate, could not have arisen from carelessness,
and they are not of a kind which an independent person could have had
any motive to introduce from design. The appendix of Bolingbroke had
been in the power of Pope, who might have transcribed it, together with
his own contribution, before it was sent; but he declared that he never
possessed a copy of either,[131] and small as is the credit due to his
protestations, he may have spoken the truth in this particular, and been
guilty not the less. The Dean was accustomed to lend his acquaintances a
volume in which he had stitched specimens of the letters of his eminent
friends.[132] The joint letter of August, 1723, was preserved,[133] when
the letters of Pope to Swift for a considerable period before and after
were lost or destroyed, and it is likely that it escaped the common fate
by its insertion in the volume of selections. There it was easily
accessible, and as Worsdale, the reputed mock-clergyman, who had
personated Smythe, was sometimes resident in Dublin, his old employer
had a trusty, or at any rate a trusted agent, ready to his hand. Curll
did not print any more of his boasted originals, and he probably only
spoke on the faith of promises which had been made him with a view to
compel compliance from the Dean, by persuading him that traitors had
admission to his cabinet.

The announcement of the publication by Curll of the joint letter of
August 23 had not the desired effect upon Swift. In his reply he took no
notice of the circumstance, and Pope, finding that nothing he could urge
would shake his resolution, addressed, in the beginning of March, 1737,
a statement of the case to Lord Orrery, who was then in Ireland, and
engaged him to second his entreaties. Lord Orrery obtained a promise
fr