the bookseller, Cooper,
with whom he was now in alliance, reprinted the entire collection, and
brought it out on the 12th of June. He at the same time announced that
his edition had been entered at Stationers' Hall, according to the Act
of Queen Anne, and that "Edmund Curll or any other pirater of the book
should be prosecuted." Curll then served upon him a process, the purport
of which does not appear, and Pope wrote to his friend and counsel
Fortescue, who a few months later was raised to the bench, and informed
him that he had bid Cooper send him the document for his legal opinion,
begged to be acquainted with the steps which were necessary to be taken,
and acknowledged that he had connived at Cooper's publication. In a
subsequent note he asks for further directions in the conduct of the
case. The poet and the bookseller were therefore working in
conjunction, or to speak more correctly, the bookseller was the agent of
the poet. It must have been by Pope's authority that he appropriated the
copyright of the letters, and threatened proceedings against any one who
invaded it. When Curll took up the gauntlet Pope adopted the cause,
engaged Fortescue in the defence, and carried on with him the
correspondence respecting it. His sanction of the publication is
confirmed by the catalogue of surreptitious editions, since this
impression of Cooper is omitted from the list, notwithstanding the
insertion of a later impression by the same bookseller, containing some
slight additions that had not been ordered by Pope. Thus while the poet
pretended that he could not own the P. T. collection, with its
mutilated, interpolated, and forged letters, he had secretly authorised
a reprint which was identical with the collection he denounced. His
actions evince the insincerity of his words. He had the power to erase
the forgeries and interpolations with a stroke of his pen, and unless he
had approved of the book in its primitive state he would not have
entered into a league with Cooper to produce it unaltered. He afterwards
seemed to disclaim the republication he had espoused. In the preface to
his avowed edition in 1737, he spoke of the "piratical printers" of the
surreptitious editions, without making any exception, and said that
there was "not one of them to whom he had ever given the least title, or
any other encouragement than that of not prosecuting them." This was
either a direct untruth or, what was more in accordance with his
peculi