his reply to the joint letter of Pope and
Bolingbroke--that very reply which the poet boasted a month or two
before could not be produced surreptitiously, because it had never been
out of his custody. Nobody else, by his own showing, had the power to
make it public, no earlier impression of it is known to exist, and, as
will be seen by comparing it with the copy from the Oxford papers, it
was printed with omissions and variations, which must have been the act
of the poet, or he would have restored the genuine readings when he
included it in his appendix. In juxtaposition with it is a letter from
Pope to Swift, dated December 10, 1725, which in like manner has never
been found in any prior publication, and which of all his letters to the
Dean is the single one we are certain was in his power when the quarto
of 1737 was in the press. He transcribed the original at the time it was
written, and sent a copy to Lord Oxford, ostensibly to let him see the
way in which he was mentioned in it, but partly, perhaps, because the
poet thought well of the production.[140] This letter of December, 1725,
reappears in tho quarto of 1741, with the addition for the first time of
a postscript by Bolingbroke. A copy of the entire performance is among
the Oxford papers, and reveals the fact that the Pope portion, and the
Bolingbroke portion, are both abridged in the published version. Yet
although the persons who brought out the collection of 1741, had the
manuscript before them, or they could not have given Bolingbroke's share
of the letter, they nevertheless, by a marvellous coincidence, print
Pope's share precisely as it had been printed by Pope himself in 1737.
The conclusion is irresistible that the editor of the quarto of 1737,
was the editor of the collection of 1741. The postscript of Bolingbroke
was not written when he was in the house with Pope, but was added
subsequently when he got back to Dawley,[141] and its omission from the
volume of 1737 was due to the circumstance, that the poet had not then
received back his correspondence from Swift, and only possessed a copy
of his own carefully composed essay.

The letter of Bolingbroke to Swift, in which the poet had no share, was
commenced at Aix-la-Chapelle on August 30, 1729, and completed at Dawley
on October 5. Pope appears not to have seen it before it was sent; for
four days later, on October 9, he says to Swift, "Lord Bolingbroke has
told me ten times over, he was going to write