the
subsequent effort to fasten his own misdeeds upon his enemy was an
outrage of a different description. To lure him into purchasing a book,
and then to employ the influence conferred by genius in founding charges
upon the act which were absolutely groundless, and in branding him with
the disgrace which belonged to his accuser, was a baseness of which the
lowest Grub-street scribbler satirised in the Dunciad would probably not
have been capable. A spirit of unfairness, which, bad as it might be,
was less injurious, pervaded his commercial dealings with Curll. The
bookseller paid ten pounds in money, and twenty pounds in promissory
notes, for three hundred copies of the work. Two hundred and forty only
were delivered, and of these one hundred and ninety wanted the letters
to Jervas, Digby, Blount, and others[88]. P. T. and Smythe stated in
their advertisement of May 23 that Curll's notes "had proved not
negotiable," which they seem to have designed as an excuse for not
completing the imperfect books[89]. Curll maintained that the defence
added slander to treachery; for the notes were not due till the 12th of
June, and he indignantly declared that they would be honoured if the
terms of the bargain were fulfilled[90]. But these terms were never
intended to be performed. Smythe had contracted to reserve the whole
impression for Curll, and assured him on May 10 that no one else should
sell a single copy.[91] The pledge was violated as soon as made by
sending a parcel of the books to Lintot, and one of the artifices which
marked every part of the transaction was employed in public to
counteract the promises which had been given in private. As Curll was to
provide his own title-page and preface, and the copies seized by the
order of the House of Lords had a title-page and preface by P. T.,
Smythe wrote to Curll on the 13th of May to explain this departure from
the arrangement. A "wonderful caution" had suddenly seized P. T., who,
apprehending that an injunction might be obtained in Chancery against
Curll, had furnished a preface which "threw the publication entirely off
him," and a title-page, in which, substituting the entire trade for an
individual, it was said that the volume was "printed and sold by the
booksellers of London and Westminster."[92] This was pronounced by
Smythe to be "as lucky as could be," and it was certainly a curious
piece of fortune which caused P. T. to transmit the fifty early copies
without title o