d's conduct, his language was throughout expressive of cordiality
and kindness.

The first intimation of a rupture is in a letter of Pope to Cromwell, on
August 21, 1710, in which he says, "Since Mr. Wycherley left London, I
have not heard a word from him, though just before, and once since, I
writ to him, and though I know myself guilty of no offence but of doing
sincerely just what he bid me." On October 28, he reverts to the
subject, and protests by everything that is holy that he is not
acquainted with the cause of the estrangement. He goes on, however, to
state that he did not suppose any man could have been so suspicious as
not to credit his own experience of a friend, and avers that he had done
nothing which deserved to be concealed--a defence which seems to
indicate a consciousness that Wycherley had heard some disparaging
report. It was subsequently asserted by Pope's enemies, and never
contradicted by Pope, that the alienation was produced by a copy of
satirical verses he had written on the man he affected to caress. His
offensive reply of May 2, to the genial letter of April 27, might alone
explain the resentment of Wycherley, if the ungracious answer in its
printed shape could be received as authentic. But I have shown that the
opening sentence, in which Pope regrets that his correspondent persisted
in taking ill his not accepting an invitation, is altogether fictitious,
and with the evidence before us in the critical epistle of November 29,
1707, that he replaced his complimentary effusions by unvarnished
truths, we may suspect that the uncompromising tone of his final letter
was softened in the original, and that the published version is merely
another instance of his anxiety to conceal the deference he had shown to
Wycherley before the celebrity of the old dramatist had been eclipsed by
the fame of the youthful poet. The almost eastern style which Pope
adopted towards him a year and a half after the close of their
correspondence, may be seen in one of his genuine epistles to Cromwell,
which was printed by Curll. "I am highly pleased," the poet writes,
November 12, 1711, "with the knowledge you give me of Mr. Wycherley's
present temper, which seems so favourable to me. I shall ever have such
a fund of affection for him, as to be agreeable to myself when I am so
to him, and cannot but be gay when he is in good humour, as the surface
of the earth, if you will pardon a poetical similitude, is clearer or
gloom