nd
allotted the second place to the primitive text. He never revived the
clumsy fabrication he had been compelled to promulgate in his
"Narrative." In private he transferred the crimes of P. T. to Curll; in
public he insinuated what he dared not assert for fear of retaliation;
but neither in public nor private was anything heard of the phantom who
had purloined, printed, and sold the correspondence. Had his existence
been real, or the invention been credited, Pope would not have persisted
in calumniating the bookseller for want of a culprit upon whom to lay
the offence.

Faulkner, the Dublin printer, told Dr. Birch, in 1749, that James
Worsdale was the person who went to Curll, by Pope's direction, in the
habit of a clergyman.[82] Before the entry in Birch's diary was
published, Dr. Johnson had given the same account in his "Lives of the
Poets."[83] Worsdale was a painter, dramatist, and actor, and, as if his
triple calling was insufficient for his versatile disposition, he
followed a fourth, and was hired, Johnson says, to conduct clandestine
negotiations. When an attempt was made to extort money from the second
son of Sir Robert Walpole, he was engaged to mix with the conspirators,
to win their confidence, and to betray it. They were convicted of the
fraud, and Worsdale, in giving his evidence, "acted with so much life
and spirit the several parts he had performed during the time of sifting
out the mystery as gave no small diversion to the court."[84] According
to Horace Walpole, the poet had employed this personator and detector of
rogues in his more reputable capacity, to make several copies of a
portrait of Atterbury.[85] He seemed formed to carry on the traffic with
Curll, and since it was his profession to aid in plots, he might be
expected to be a secret as well as a willing assistant. Johnson, who
attached some weight to his evidence, says he was of doubtful
veracity,--an objection which would have applied to the disclosures of
any representative of Smythe; for no upright man would have played a
part in a scheme of deception. His assertion would have been worthless,
if it had stood alone; but it at least falls in with the numerous
circumstances which all conjoin to criminate Pope.

If his impatience to print the Wycherley correspondence renders it
probable that he would be anxious to print the more important collection
which he had sedulously prepared for the press; if the deception he
practised in 1729, to a