it had been a subsequent interpolation, when the matter was
insufficient to make the sheet complete. The half-sheet, the duplicate
paging, and the duplicate signatures, are all the result of the
insertion of fresh materials after the work was struck off, and betray
that there was an earlier form of the quarto of 1741, which contained
less than the Dublin edition, and which, therefore, being prior to it,
is a proof that the correspondence was originally printed by Pope. The
letters in the quarto are numbered, and since the series is unbroken
throughout, the original cancelled division must ostensibly have
comprised as many letters as when it was subsequently enlarged. But a
letter to Gay, dated Nov. 23, 1727, is found by the copies preserved in
the Oxford papers, to be compounded of three distinct letters, and this
system of fusion would have permitted the introduction of large
additions without deranging the continuity Of the numbers, which Pope
would have been anxious to preserve. The cancels he made to suit his
varying views were in accordance with his practice. The miscellaneous
prose works, which follow the letters, have in one place alone a cancel
of upwards of a hundred pages. Equally characteristic was the desire to
preserve any of the old sheets which could be retained, regardless of
the blemish to the book, and the trace they might afford of his
manoeuvres. It was a repetition of the paper-sparing policy which led
him to incorporate the suppressed sheets of his Wycherley into the
volume of 1735.[152]

On the 22nd of March, 1741, Pope called upon Lord Orrery at his house in
London, and found him writing to Swift. The poet took the pen from his
hand, and continued the letter. After large professions of affection, he
went on to say, "I must confess, a late incident has given me some pain;
but I am satisfied you were persuaded it would not have given me any,
and whatever unpleasant circumstances the printing our letters might be
attended with, there was one that pleased me,--that the strict
friendship we have borne each other so long is thus made known to all
mankind. As far as it was your will, I cannot be angry at what, in all
other respects, I am quite uneasy under. Had you asked me, before you
gave them away, I think I could have proposed some better monument for
our friendship, or, at least, of better materials." Any words addressed
to Swift were lost upon him now, and Pope in reality was speaking to
Lord Orre