he collection of 1735. The probability is that the book which Pope
professed to require for a day or two was never returned. The
circumstance is the more suspicious because he had the originals at
home, which would have served him for reference, whereas if his object
was to commit the letters clandestinely to the press he would use the
copy which had been specially prepared for the purpose,--which had been
expurgated, altered, and sometimes remodelled. Accordingly we find that
P. T. reappears at this crisis with the correspondence in print. He had
failed to lure Curll by a promise of letters which he would not produce.
He now changed his tactics, and offered him an entire impression of the
book.

This second act of the plot was opened by a communication of Curll to
Pope on the 22nd of March, three weeks after the letters had been
withdrawn from the library of Lord Oxford. He invited the poet to close
their differences, and, as a proof of his readiness to oblige him, sent
him the old advertisement of P. T. Curll asserted that he took the step
"by direction."[31] When he republished this statement he volunteered
another, which seems to be inconsistent with it, and says that the
discovery of the advertisement, when arranging his papers, determined
him to propose a cessation of hostilities.[32] As he was unconscious,
however, of any contradiction in the double account, it is probable that
he may have been influenced by some concurring advice. It strengthens
this view that Pope, in an anonymous "Narrative," which he subsequently
put forth, reports what Curll told a few days later, "to persons who
sifted him in the affair,"[33] which shows that the bookseller had
people about him in the interest of the poet, and these sifters, as the
critic in the Athenaeum remarks, might, when needful, become prompters.
The progress of events proved that the letter of Curll was at least
singularly opportune, and if not written "by direction," was one of
those fortunate chances which often contribute to the success of the
best laid schemes. Pope replied to it by inserting an advertisement in
the "Grub Street Journal," the "Daily Journal," and "The Daily Post
Boy." He stated in this manifesto, that Curll "pretended that P. T. had
offered him to print a large collection of Pope's letters," that he
would have no correspondence with Curll, that he knew no such person as
P. T., that he believed the letters to be a forgery, and that he should
not t