rity would do you a kindness, I have
not mangled you where I thought there was no absolute need of
amputation." Wycherley continued to return thanks for all this hacking
and hewing, which was, indeed, of inestimable service to his
compositions. But at last his thanks began to sound very like
reproaches. In private, he is said to have described Pope as a person
who could not cut out a suit, but who had some skill in turning old
coats. In his letters to Pope, while he acknowledged that the
versification of the poems had been greatly improved, he spoke of the
whole art of versification with scorn, and sneered at those who
preferred sound to sense. Pope revenged himself for this outbreak of
spleen by return of post. He had in his hands a volume of Wycherley's
rhymes, and he wrote to say that this volume was so full of faults that
he could not correct it without completely defacing the manuscript. "I
am," he said, "equally afraid of sparing you, and of offending you by
too impudent a correction." This was more than flesh and blood could
bear. Wycherley reclaimed his papers, in a letter in which resentment
shows itself plainly through the thin disguise of civility. Pope, glad
to be rid of a troublesome and inglorious task, sent back the deposit,
and, by way of a parting courtesy, advised the old man to turn his
poetry into prose, and assured him that the public would like his
thoughts much better without his versification. Thus ended this
memorable correspondence.

Wycherley lived some years after the termination of the strange
friendship which we have described. The last scene of his life was,
perhaps, the most scandalous. Ten days before his death, at
seventy-five, he married a young girl merely in order to injure his
nephew, an act which proves that neither years, nor adversity, nor what
he called his philosophy, nor either of the religions which he had at
different times professed, had taught him the rudiments of morality. He
died in December, 1715, and lies in the vault under the church of St.
Paul in Covent Garden.

His bride soon after married a Captain Shrimpton, who thus became
possessed of a large collection of manuscripts. These were sold to a
bookseller. They were so full of erasures and interlineations that no
printer could decipher them. It was necessary to call in the aid of a
professed critic; and Theobald, the editor of Shakespeare, and the hero
of the first Dunciad, was employed to ascertain the true readi