[Footnote 171: "Notes and Queries," No. 260, p. 485.]

[Footnote 172: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 9.]

[Footnote 173: Oxford MSS. The rest of the letter is taken up with an
account of some religious fanatics.]

[Footnote 174: "Lives of the Poets," Vol. III. p. 10.]

[Footnote 175: The general impression produced by the correspondence was
expressed by Spence, when he observed to Pope, "People have pitied you
extremely on reading your letters to Wycherley. Surely it was a very
difficult thing for you to keep well with him." "The most difficult
thing in the world," was Pope's reply. On another occasion he said to
Spence, "Wycherley was really angry with me for correcting his verses so
much. I was extremely plagued, up and down, for almost two years with
them. However it went off pretty well at last." When Pope tampered with
the written records which he cited as evidence upon the question, we can
place no reliance on his passing words.]

[Footnote 176: Oxford MSS.]

[Footnote 177: This statement is from the edition of the pamphlet
published in 1749. Mallet was the nominal, and Bolingbroke the real
editor. The particulars of Pope's misconduct are related with much
asperity in a preliminary advertisement, of which the original,
corrected by Bolingbroke, is in the British Museum.]

[Footnote 178: Advertisement to the edition of 1749.]

[Footnote 179: Advertisement to the edition of 1749. In the same year
Warburton put forth a short pamphlet entitled, "A Letter to the Editor
of the Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism," &c., which was reprinted,
in 1769, in the Appendix to Ruffhead's Life of Pope. In this reply
Warburton extenuates, without justifying, the act of his friend, and is
more successful in his attack upon Bolingbroke for exposing the
treachery than in his defence of Pope for perpetrating it. The "Letter
to the Editor of the Letters" is chiefly valuable for its admission of
the principal charges against the poet. His advocate, who had seen both
the genuine and corrupted edition of the phamphlet, allows that he had
tampered with the text. Bolingbroke had only specified alterations and
ommissions. Warburton goes further, and speaks of interpolations. In the
body of Ruffhead's work it is stated that Pope altered nothing, and
"only struck out some insults on the throne and the then reigning
monarch." But this is opposed to the language of Warburton twenty years
before, when the subject was fresh, and Boli