revision of Pope. It shows that he furnished
entire passages, and where the text is not explicit on the point he is
careful to reclaim his contributions in the notes. It displays on the
one hand the "first sprightly runnings" of the precocious young poet,
and on the other the "last dull droppings" of the veteran author, who
was verging upon his dotage. "If we were to judge," says Warburton, "of
this set of letters by the manner of thinking and turn of expression, we
should conclude that they were all mistitled, and that those given to
the boy of sixteen were written by the man of seventy, and the
contrary,--such sober sense, such gravity of manners, and so much
judgment and knowledge of composition, enlivened with manly wit,
distinguish those of Mr. Pope, while a childish jealousy, a puerile
affectation, a lying at catch for points, together with a total contempt
of method, make up the character of those of Mr. Wycherley." Warton
transcribes the judgment of Warburton, and adds his testimony to the
superiority of the letters of Pope. He says that he "has excelled
Wycherley in his own way of striving to be always witty," and that "the
perpetual attempt of the vain old man to be brilliant, the accumulation
of simile upon simile, the antithesis, the cant of satire, the severity
on authors, critics, and women, are sufficiently disgusting." In short,
the whole effect of the correspondence was to display the infirmities
of Wycherley and the merits of Pope; and his mode of relieving his
departed friend from the reproach of the posthumous poems was to reveal
the secret that the only portions of them which might have done him
credit were not his own, but the work of this zealous vindicator of his
fame.

With such a futile excuse for printing the letters, Pope was anxious to
throw the responsibility upon some other person. He was the intimate
friend of Edward, the second Earl of Oxford, who, without being
possessed of much ability, courted the society of eminent men, and who,
with no great tincture of literature, had inherited from his father a
passion for collecting books and manuscripts. His correspondence with
the poet descended, with the rest of his personal papers, to his only
child, who married the Duke of Portland in 1734. From the Duchess the
papers passed to her eldest daughter, Lady Elizabeth, wife to the third
Viscount Weymouth, who subsequently became the first Marquess of Bath.
The Oxford manuscripts were consequently