himself to Dr.
Birch in August, 1749. "Mr. Pope," he said, "sent to Ireland to Dr.
Swift, by Mr. Gerrard, an Irish gentleman, then at Bath, a printed copy
of their letters, with an anonymous letter, which occasioned Dr. Swift
to give Mr. Faulkner leave to reprint them at Dublin, though Mr. Pope's
edition was published first."[143] Faulkner also solicited the sanction
of Pope, and we have the poet's summary of the application, in the
letter he wrote to Mr. Nugent on August 14, 1740: "Last week I received
an account from Faulkner, the Dublin bookseller, that the Dean himself
has given him a collection of letters of his own and mine, and others,
to be printed, and he civilly asks my consent, assuring me the Dean
declares them genuine, and that Mr. Swift, Mrs. Whiteway's son-in-law,
will correct the press, out of his great respect to the Dean and myself.
He says they were collected by some unknown persons, and the copy sent
with a letter importing that it was criminal to suppress such an amiable
picture of the Dean, and his private character appearing in those
letters, and that if he would not publish them in his lifetime others
would after his death." It is manifest from these particulars that
Faulkner was not then aware that Pope himself had sent the
correspondence to Swift, and the conviction was only forced upon his
mind by subsequent events. But the bookseller could not be mistaken on
the point that the letters were handed to him in print. As he later told
Dr. Birch that the Dean had given him leave to reprint them because they
were printed already, so he proclaimed that his volume was a reprint at
the time. He inserted at the end of his _first_ edition the few new
letters which were added in the quarto of 1741, and says that he found
them in the London impression "after he had _reprinted_ the foregoing
sheets." Faulkner had no sort of motive to deceive. Whether the letters
were in type or in manuscript he had equally received them from Swift,
and obtained his authority to publish them.

If further testimony is required it is supplied by Pope. To the mention
of Mrs. Whiteway in Lord Orrery's letter of 1738 the poet appended a
note in which he says, "This lady since gave Mr. Pope the strongest
assurances that she had used her utmost endeavours to prevent the
publication--nay, went so far as to secrete the book, till it was
commanded from her, and delivered to the Dublin printer, whereupon her
son-in-law, D. Swift, Esq.,