I wrote to you from Montpelier upon a very melancholy occasion."
These extracts testify that the letter which Curll published of November
23, 1731, was not a solitary instance, and that other letters had passed
between the poet and Atterbury "even after that period when it was made
felony to correspond with him." The proof which Pope urged with
triumphant scorn to demonstrate that the letter of November 23 must be
counterfeited was therefore an absolute fraud. His disingenuousness did
not end here. He printed Atterbury's letter of November 20, 1729, at the
same time that he reproduced the letter published by Curll, and said in
a note,--"This also seems genuine, though whether written to Mr. P. or
some learned friend in France, is uncertain; but we doubt not it will be
acceptable to the reader." To support the alleged uncertainty he omitted
the passages which showed that it was addressed to a sickly poet in
England. The complete letter was inserted by Mr. Nichols in the
"Epistolary Correspondence of Atterbury," and his version is confirmed
by a copy among the Oxford papers at Longleat. The bishop died in
February, 1732; and if in 1739 Pope thought it unsafe to admit that he
had held communication with him in his banishment upon literary and
domestic topics, he might have left the letter to be published by
Warburton, and not have violated truth for the sake of hurrying it
before the world.

Such was the series of stratagems which ushered in and accompanied the
collection of 1735, from its first appearance in the volume of P. T. to
its final shape in the volumes of Cooper. Pope's skill in deception was
not equal to his passion for it. Audacity was the chief characteristic
of his contrivances, and equivocation and lying his weapons of defence.
When a trick or a subterfuge was detected, and could no longer be
denied, he yet remained unabashed, and dropping all allusion to the
points which had been proved against him, he continued to rely upon the
falsehoods or fallacies which had been less completely exposed. His
pertinacity in reiterating that he was sinned against when he was
sinning, derived support from his literary fame, which gave currency to
his representations, and in some degree gained credit to them. But his
duplicity and his artifices were known to many, and it would be
difficult to say whether his effrontery or his hypocrisy was most
conspicuous when he affixed to the preface to the quarto of 1737 the
punning mo