by Mr. P. of the
return or exchange of letters has been industriously suppressed in the
publication, and only appears by some of the answers."

The case of Gay is first to be considered. There is not an allusion in
any of the "answers," either to the exchange of the letters which passed
between Gay and Swift, or the return of the letters which Swift
addressed to Gay. An exchange, at all events, had not taken place. The
letters of Gay were retained by Swift, and after the death of the Dean
they were printed from the originals. Three only are contained in the
quarto of 1741, and these are joint productions of Gay and Pope,[136]
which would naturally have been made over to the latter when he
reclaimed the whole of his correspondence with Swift. If the Dean was
the culprit we must believe that while publishing, or permitting others
to publish, his own letters to Gay, he deliberately excluded every one
of Gay's replies, with the exception of the three in which Pope had a
share. If Pope was the culprit the peculiarity is explained. He
published the three letters which, being in part his own writing, had
been sent back to him in 1737, and he published no others because the
rest of the letters of Gay were not in his possession.

As the Duke of Queensberry was living, the introduction of his name is a
species of guarantee that Swift had received back his letters to Gay;
but the conclusion does not follow, which Pope intended to be drawn,
that the Dean must therefore have supplied them to the printer. "One
thing," says Swift to Gay, Nov. 20, 1729, "you are to consider, because
it is an old compact, that when I write to you, or Mr. Pope, I write to
both." On the death of Gay the correspondence passed a second time
through Pope's hands, and with his habit at that period of getting the
letters of his intimates, as well as his own letters, transcribed for
future use, it may readily be imagined that he would not miss the
opportunity of securing a valuable collection, in which he may be said
to have had a common property with his departed friend[137]. Hence it
happens that copies of all Swift's letters to Gay, together with one
that was not printed, are preserved among the Oxford manuscripts, and
with this evidence that the entire series was not less in the power of
Pope than of Swift, suspicion must incline to the one who had made
elaborate preparations for publication, and who had shown himself eager
for it. The suppression too of G