ddressed to another, it is inserted in its
proper place, and again in the group to which it was falsely assigned by
the writer. Unless the correspondence was exhibited in its double form,
a just idea could not easily be obtained of the shape and colour he
imparted to it, or of the relations which he pretended to have
maintained with his contemporaries. Where the direction was not changed,
and we possess both the genuine and the corrected letter, the true
version is given in the text, and any variations in his amended version
which seemed worthy of notice are pointed out in the notes. Even here,
from the nature and extent of the alterations, it has sometimes been
necessary to preserve a letter in its twofold state.

The greater part of the collection of 1735 was reproduced in the quarto
of 1737; but as the texts are not always identical the earliest has been
followed, except where there is manifestly an error of the press, or
where the quarto supplies passages which are not in the volume of P. T.
I had once intended to subjoin the whole of the various readings at the
foot of the page. I abandoned the design upon finding that the vast
majority of them were verbal, and apparently unimportant changes, which
could only have interested the few curious inquirers who would always
have recourse to the original editions. I have not the less carefully
collated these original editions throughout, and have thus got rid of
numerous mistakes which had become traditional in the subsequent
reprints. The notes signed "Pope, 1735," were first published in the P.
T. collection, with the exception of a few in the Wycherley group,
which, though they are only known to us through the P. T. volume, had
undoubtedly appeared in 1729. Many of the P. T. notes were transferred
to the authorised impression of 1737, and they were nearly all in the
copies which the poet delivered to Warburton for posthumous publication.
The notes signed "Pope, 1737," were added in the quarto of that year;
and those signed "Cooper, 1737," are from the octavos which bear the
name of this bookseller on the title-page.

Language was current in Pope's day which would be considered grossly
indelicate in ours, and though he abounds in refined and elevated
strains, he was yet among the worst offenders of his time. "He and
Swift," says Dr. Johnson, "had an unnatural delight in ideas physically
impure, such as every other tongue utters with unwillingness, and of
which every ear