he sheets
were submitted to his criticism in forestalling the Dublin edition. Mr.
D. Swift believed that the correspondence was first published in
Ireland. Faulkner asserted that it was first published in England, and
Faulkner, who could not well be mistaken, was right. No advertisement of
the Irish volume is to be found in the "Dublin News Letter" till some
time after the English volume was on sale, and no copy exists in the
public libraries, or after long search could be heard of from the
second-hand booksellers, which does not contain the additional matter
inserted in the quarto.[149] In the prefatory notice to the quarto
itself we are told that the letters are taken "from an impression sent
from Dublin, and said to be printed by the Dean's direction." This was
the impression which had been privately forwarded to Pope, and the
language seems to have been carefully selected to avoid the assertion
that there had been a publication of the work. The poet's scheme may be
discerned in the account he gave to Allen. He informed him that the
book, being most of it printed, was "put past preventing," but that he
was "trying all the means possible to retard it." In plain words, he was
manoeuvring to keep back the Irish edition till his rival reprint was
in the market. When he had succeeded in his device, he repeated his old
tactics of advertising that the surreptitious collection was the cause
of his own, and at the same time bespoke the preference for his reprint
by announcing that it would contain "several additional letters."[150]

Apart from these additions, the quarto of Pope is a reproduction, with
some variations, of the Dublin impression, and a few notes which
Faulkner had doubtless found in the volume sent from England, are said
in the quarto to be taken from Faulkner. Nevertheless there is strong
internal evidence that a portion of the quarto had an independent
origin, and had been printed off before the Irish edition was received.
The correspondence consists of 209 pages, which are numbered
consecutively from 1 to 115. At this point the letters of Swift to Gay
commence, and instead of the numbers proceeding in regular order, they
go back to page 89, and are thence continued without any break to the
final page, 182. That the arrangement is not a typographical mistake is
clear from the signatures of the sheets being in accordance with the
paging,--a coincidence which was barely possible if the figures had been
a mispri