not seen until Mr. Dilke became possessed of
the Caryll correspondence. On comparing the copies preserved by Caryll
with the letters published by Pope, it became evident that Pope had
regarded these letters as so much raw material, which he might carve
into shape at pleasure, and with such alterations of date and address as
might be convenient, to the confusion of all biographers and editors
ignorant of his peculiar method of editing. The details of these very
disgraceful falsifications have been fully described by Mr. Elwin,[19]
but I turn gladly from this lamentable narrative to say something of the
literary value of the correspondence. Every critic has made the obvious
remark that Pope's letters are artificial and self-conscious. Pope
claimed the opposite merit. "It is many years," he says to Swift in
---4, "since I wrote as a wit." He smiles to think "how Curll would be
bit were our epistles to fall into his hands, and how gloriously they
would fall short of every ingenious reader's anticipations." Warburton
adds in a note that Pope used to "value himself upon this particular."
It is indeed true that Pope had dropped the boyish affectation of his
letters to Wycherley and Cromwell. But such a statement in the mouth of
a man who plotted to secure Curll's publication of his letters, with
devices elaborate enough to make the reputation of an unscrupulous
diplomatist, is of course only one more example of the superlative
degree of affectation, the affectation of being unaffected. We should be
indeed disappointed were we to expect in Pope's letters what we find in
the best specimens of the art: the charm which belongs to a simple
outpouring of friendly feeling in private intercourse; the sweet
playfulness of Cowper, or the grave humour of Gray, or even the sparkle
and brilliance of Walpole's admirable letters. Though Walpole had an eye
to posterity, and has his own mode of affectation, he is for the moment
intent on amusing, and is free from the most annoying blemish in Pope's
writing, the resolution to appear always in full dress, and to mount as
often as possible upon the stilts of moral self-approbation. All this is
obvious to the hasty reader; and yet I must confess my own conviction
that there is scarcely a more interesting volume in the language than
that which contains the correspondence of Swift, Bolingbroke, and Pope.
To enjoy it, indeed, we must not expect to be in sympathy with the
writers. Rather we must adopt