true could but brand him with reprobation. The offences were not of
a nature to be softened by apologies. De Quincey was in a lenient mood
when he wrote his sketch of Pope's Life, and his more favourable
impressions necessarily carried with them the conviction that the
"disgraceful imputation" against Pope of having made Curll his tool and
victim was "most assuredly unfounded."[124] Speaking, on another
occasion, of Pope's attack on Hill and the Duke of Chandos, he says,
"Evil is the day for a conscientious man when his sole resource for
self-defence lies in a falsehood."[125] De Quincey was ignorant of the
history of the letters, and he would have altered his opinion if he had
known that Pope in self-defence had been prodigal of the falsehoods
which are the last refuge of guilt.

There still remains the small episode of the six letters unconnected
with the P. T. volume, which were declared by Pope to be spurious in his
preface to the quarto. Four of them purported to be from Pope to Miss
Blount, and two to be letters of Atterbury to Pope. Those to Miss Blount
were forwarded to Curll by a correspondent who signed himself S. E. The
bookseller published them in the third volume of "Mr. Pope's Literary
Correspondence," and announced that he had discovered them to be
translations from Voiture. S. E. only professed to send copies, which
are now in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Mr. Carruthers states
correctly that the size and quality of the paper is precisely the same
as in the genuine letters of the poet, and that the handwriting appears
to be his "a little disguised." The letters bear on their face the marks
of their origin, and Pope acted according to usage in endeavouring to
delude Curll that he might afterwards build a charge upon his own
deceptions. There is, however, a second claimant for the honour of
having devised the cheat. In an edition of Pope's works, which belonged
to Douce the antiquary, some one has copied an extract from a letter of
Mr. J. Plumptre, dated May 1, 1744, in which he informs his wife that
their son Charles, who was afterwards Rector of St. Mary Woolnoth,
London, and Archdeacon of Ely, was the author of the trick.[126] The
incident was nine years old when Mr. Plumptre proudly acquainted Mrs.
Plumptre with the secret. He mentioned that the letters were sent to
Curll by the penny post, and the original cover in the Bodleian Library
shows that they were not sent by post at all. He said that his so