ibits the publication of a letter without the permission of its
author, the manner in which Pope invoked it was singular. According to
his statement it was Swift that had prepared and put forth a
correspondence, in which more of the letters were from the pen of the
Dean than from the pen of the poet. Pope, while professing to be vexed
beyond measure at this exposure of private papers, asked for an
injunction, not for the purpose of suppressing them, but to obtain a
monopoly of the sale. He was not even content to reclaim his personal
share in the publication of the friend whom he upbraided for the act.
He tried to prevent any one except himself from profiting by Swift's
part of the book, and at the same time that he was endeavouring to
secure goods which did not belong to him, he reproached their owner for
displaying them. His conduct once more betrayed the truth he laboured to
conceal. He was the compiler of the collection, and instinctively
regarded a rival edition as an invasion of his rights. His proceedings
were unnatural, if Swift was the sole originator of the work; but if it
had a different source we can perceive why Pope was jealous of the least
interference with property which, from the outset, he considered to be
exclusively his own.

A fatality attended the correspondence of Pope. Curll, in defiance of
him, printed his letters to Cromwell. Lord Oxford, in spite of his
disapproval, printed his letters to Wycherley. An unknown person, by
unknown means, obtained the whole of the collection of 1735, printed it
secretly at his own expense, and sold it for a song. To render the
history uniform and complete, Swift, who would not permit Pope to print
their letters, printed them himself, while Pope, changing sides with
him, remonstrated and threatened. That nothing might be wanting to the
singularity of the case, the three last sets of letters stole into the
world when they were under the vigilant guardianship of the poet, and
the two last sets got abroad after the abiding paroxysm of terror,
engendered by the indiscretion of a single dissolute friend, had induced
him to wrest his correspondence from friends of every degree for the
purpose of securing it from the possibility of publication. Mrs.
Whiteway remarked to Lord Orrery, that among the letters in the Dean's
stitched book were numbers from the greatest men in England for genius,
learning, and power,--from Bolingbroke, Oxford, Bathurst, and
Peterborough; from A