e it would meet the eye of the persons implicated,
the fable he had palmed off upon Allen in private. Nay, when stating in
the quarto that Mrs. Whiteway and her son-in-law charged the whole
proceeding upon the corrupt practices of the London printers, he still
did not venture to retort that the originals had never left the custody
of the "Dean's people," who detained them in Dublin until, according to
his own expression, the Dublin printers had "done their job." The fact
was, that Allen had intimated his apprehension that Pope would be
suspected of being concerned in the publication, and Pope replied that
"the whole thing was so circumstanced that this could never be the
case." To stifle the suggestion, he based a falsehood upon a foundation
of truth, and spoke of the letters which Mrs. Whiteway had offered to
send him, in the beginning of 1740, as though they had been the
originals of the printed correspondence. His invention of a fiction to
establish his innocence, is a sure indication of his guilt.

The Dean's people promised Pope the copy of the correspondence, that he
might correct and expunge what he pleased. "I dare not," he wrote to
Allen, "even do this, for they would say I revised it." His mind
immediately veered from decision to uncertainty, and in the next
sentence but one he states that "he knows not whether to make any use of
the permission or not." A little further, and he comes to the conclusion
that until he sees the letters he can form no judgment of the proper
measures to be pursued. "The excessive earnestness," he adds, "the Dean
has been in for publishing them makes me hope they are castigated in
some degree; or he must be totally deprived of his understanding." Lord
Mansfield deposed, from the personal information of Pope, that his
imperfect memory of their contents increased his anxiety to stop the
publication.[148] In the midst of his apprehensions, his knowledge of
Swift's incapacity, and his conviction that it would be insanity to
allow the correspondence to go forth in its integrity, he yet resolved
not to expurgate the copy, and then doubted whether he would expurgate
it or not. This easy kind of hesitation, which has none of the
appearance of genuine alarm, was what might be expected in a man who had
already revised the letters to his heart's content, and was poorly
performing a borrowed part. Though he ended by refusing to retouch a
text of his own preparing, he employed the interval while t