by only two pages, which must have been cancelled, and the
present letter put in their place.[171] This new letter is dated
December 26, 1704, and contains his reflections on a compliment which he
alleges had been paid to him by Wycherley--that his compositions were
above the attacks of envious critics. "It is pleasant to remark," says
Dr. Johnson, "how soon Pope learned the cant of an author, and began to
treat critics with contempt, though he had yet suffered nothing from
them."[172] He did not in fact publish a single line till more than four
years later, and with our present evidence that the letter was an
interpolated after-thought, we cannot but suspect that Wycherley's
premature compliment, and Pope's premature cant both belonged to a
subsequent period, or perhaps were fabricated for the press. "The
author's age then sixteen," says the poet in a note, and in this
ostentatious announcement we have the motive to the act. The opinion of
Warburton, that the letters of the boy displayed all the characteristics
of the man, is an argument the more that they were the productions of
the man and not of the boy.

"I have received," writes Wycherley, in an unpublished letter, dated
December 6, 1707, "yours of the 29th of November, which has so much
overpaid mine in kindness that, as Voiture says, I doubt whether the
best effects of those fine expressions of your friendship to me can be
more obliging than they themselves; and for my humility you talk of, you
have lessened while you magnify it, as by commending my good nature with
so much more of yours you have made me almost incapable of being
grateful to you; for you have said so many kind things of me you have
hardly left me anything of the same kind to return you, and the best
actions are not capable of making you amends for so many good words you
have given me, by which you justly magnify them and yourself by saying
they are sincere, so that you have obliged me to be vain rather than not
think you a Plain Dealer. Thus, even against your own opinion, your
freedom with me proves not you a fool, but me so, especially if I could
think half the good you say of me my due. As for the good book you sent
me I took it as kindly as the reprimand from the good man, which I think
you heard, and was that I should not stand in my own light."[173] Pope
printed his letter of November 29, to which this letter was a reply, and
it touches upon none of the topics to which Wycherley refers. Th