on, Swift showed her
what he had written, and on the 24th of August he subjoined a postscript
in which, after saying that he would correct, if it were possible, the
blunders committed in his letter, he simply added that his cousin had
assured him that "a great collection of your/my letters to me/you are
put up and scaled, and in some very safe hand." The counter-assurance of
Mrs. Whiteway to Lord Orrery that she had no knowledge of the
collection, shows that the corrected version was as fanciful as the
original statement. Swift's language in 1738 would imply that the chasm
in the correspondence no longer existed, and that no part of the series
had yet been transmitted to England; but it was the language of a man
labouring under the misapprehension and obliviousness produced by
disease, and could have little weight in opposition to the testimony
that Pope had received back a packet of his letters in the previous
year. Any doubt which could have existed on the point is done away by
the admission of Pope himself. Mrs. Whiteway had refused in 1740 to send
back some of his letters by the mother of the Mr. Nugent, who afterwards
became Lord Clare, because the poet had authorised her to entrust them
to a Mr. M'Aulay. "I believe," Pope wrote to Mr. Nugent, "they had
entertained a jealousy of you, as the same persons did before of my Lord
Orrery. They then prevented the Dean from complying to any purpose with
my request. They then sent a few just to save appearances, and possibly
to serve as a sort of plea to excuse them of being taxed with this
proceeding, which is now thrown upon the Dean himself."[135] The
"proceeding" was the committing the correspondence to the press, and
Pope, on his own part, to avoid being taxed with it, was privately
putting forth the plea that the bulk of his letters had not been
returned to him. The confession that he had received a few is a complete
answer to the delusion of Swift, and they must have been more than a
very few, or they would not have been sufficient "to save appearances."
Setting aside the representations of the poet, upon which no dependence
can be placed, except when he bears witness against himself, there is
nothing to oppose, and much to confirm the idea that they were the
identical "few" which were published in the quarto of 1741.

When Swift first collected the letters in May, 1737, he mentioned that
they were not much above sixty, and in July, when they had been sent
away, and