ier, just as the sun is brighter or more overcast." Whatever may
have caused the sun to be overcast, there could have been little ground
of complaint against Wycherley, or Pope would not have fabricated the
pretence that he had provoked his anger by declining an invitation.

On the appearance of Theobald's edition of the Posthumous Works of
Wycherley, the poet poured out his indignation to Lord Oxford. "I
foresaw," he said, October 6, 1729, "some dirty trick in connection with
my friend Wycherley's papers which they were publishing, and nothing can
at once do justice so well to him and to me, who was by him employed in
them, as the divulging of some parts of his and my letters." At the
moment that he was penning this denunciation against "dirty tricks in
relation to Wycherley's papers," though no trick had been practised, he
was busily engaged in aspersing his friend by garbling the papers he
professed to divulge out of justice to his memory. His motives were not
malignant. He was simply desirous to do credit to himself, but to effect
this end he did not scruple to falsify their private correspondence, and
under the plea of justifying a man who was in his grave, took advantage
of his death to libel him in safety. When with our scanty means of
testing the fidelity of the letters, we find that part of them were
misplaced, distorted, and invented, the rest of the series must be
received with distrust, and some which cannot be proved to be fabricated
are among the most suspicious of the whole.

Where the originals of Pope's letters were in hostile hands, as was the
case with his letters to Cromwell and to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, he
was compelled to be sparing in his operations. He omitted sentences and
altered phrases, but could not venture upon wholesale perversions of the
truth. Of the bulk of the letters he published we have neither the
originals nor reliable copies; but when we chance to light upon the
materials from which he worked, we find, as might be expected, that he
was not more conscientious in his use of them than in his reckless
falsification of his correspondence with Wycherley and Caryll. The
volume of 1735 concludes with a letter from Arbuthnot, dated July 17,
1734, and in the quarto of 1737 we have the pretended reply of the poet.
Among the Arbuthnot papers in the possession of Mr. Baillie, is the
actual answer sent by Pope, and it turns out that the printed substitute
is an elaborate composition that ha