t in the "Postman," offering a reward of three
guineas for the discovery of the person who sent it to the press. The
publisher, Mrs. Burleigh, declared that she possessed the manuscript in
his own handwriting, and expressed her readiness to produce it, but he
never ventured to accept the challenge or to contradict her
assertion.[66] Pope did not acknowledge that the essence of a falsehood
was in the deceit. "If you have seen a late advertisement," he wrote to
Miss Blount, August 7, 1716, alluding probably to this transaction, "you
will know that I have not told a lie, which we both abominate, but
equivocated pretty genteelly." Without in strict language disclaiming
the authorship, he intended that the reader should understand it as a
disclaimer. His advertisement respecting the letters was a kindred case.
He meant it to be received as a denial of all connivance at the
publication of his correspondence, and in strict language he denied
nothing. He said that the book was printed by P. T., in combination with
Smythe, which was equally true, if P. T. was Pope. He could use the
phrase "_some_ of the letters," when driven to confess that they were
procured from the library of Lord Oxford, because the volume contained
the Cromwell and Wycherley letters, which had been printed before. He
could hold out the bait of rewards to himself without any risk of
betrayal, and the manoeuvre must have been adopted in concert with his
accomplice Smythe, upon whose secresy and fidelity he was already
dependent.

The Committee of the Lords reported that there was not a letter from any
peer in the work, and since no law had been infringed, they recommended
that the seized copies should be restored.[67] Motte, the bookseller,
writing to Swift in July 31, 1735, says, that when Curll was before the
House, "he was ruffled for the publication in a manner as, to a man of
less impudence than his own, would have been very uneasy." With whatever
virulence he may have been attacked by the partisans of the poet, he was
invulnerable from his want of character as well as from his want of
shame, and he had the gratification of inflicting wounds he could not
receive. "Pope," he said to the Lords, "has a knack of versifying, but
in prose I think myself a match for him."[68] He afterwards boasted that
he had not only vindicated his assertion, but that he might affirm "with
regard to all the attacks made upon him by the petulant little
gentleman,--_veni, vidi,