notice, "E. C. hath received a letter, and will comply
with P. T." This Curll did, and on the 15th of November got an answer
from P. T., in which the true purpose of the manoeuvre transpires.
Instead of sending traits of the defects in Pope's manners, he announces
that he has "a large collection of his letters from the former part of
his days till the year 1727, which will alone make the most authentic
memoirs of him that could be." He adds that they will form a four or
five shilling volume, and "yet I expect no more," he says, "than what
will barely pay a transcriber, that the originals may be preserved in
mine or your hands to vouch for the truth of them." He appealed to the
hatred as well as to the avarice of the bookseller. He again asserted
that he had experienced bad treatment from Pope and that his sole motive
was "to bestow upon him" the same "care" which Curll had done
already.[29] Again his thirst for retaliation ended in homage, for the
collection consisted of the identical letters which the poet had
prepared for the press, and which were intended to raise instead of to
lower his reputation. The conduct of P. T., who, having abjured profit
and only feigned revenge, was to get nothing by his roguery, is
altogether incomprehensible, if we are to suppose that he was what he
professed; but his conduct ceases to be a mystery if P. T. was Pope,
who, having finished editing his letters, may be presumed to have had
the same desire to find a pretext for printing them as he had exhibited
in the instance of the correspondence with Wycherley.

The point upon which the bargain went off for a time is equally
significant. P. T. enclosed an advertisement of the letters, and
required as a preliminary that it should be put forth by Curll, "for I
shall not," he said, "be justified to some people on whom I have
dependence, unless it seem to the public eye as no entire act of mine;
but I may be justified and excused if, after they see such a collection
is made by you, I acknowledge I sent some letters to contribute
thereto."[30] This reasoning carries its own refutation. If his patrons
could believe that Curll, without his aid, had got at the bulk of the
correspondence, they would quite as readily have credited that he had
not assisted the bookseller to the remainder. Nor is it likely that the
men who would have renounced P. T. if he had been a principal in the
business, would have connived at his becoming an accomplice. His plea