He was as little
likely to deceive, for he told the fact in the course of a
straight-forward story, without perceiving, or at least without pointing
out, its force in attesting the connivance of Pope.

Fifty copies of the letters were in the possession of Curll by the 12th
of May, and were speedily sold. Smythe sent for him at one o'clock to a
tavern in Leicester Fields, and half an hour afterwards one hundred and
ninety additional copies were brought by a couple of porters, who were
directed to carry them to the shop of the bookseller. There they were
immediately seized by an order from the House of Lords, and Curll was
commanded to attend next day.[39] The peers in 1722 had voted it a
breach of privilege to publish the writings of any member of their body
without his consent. Curll, in an advertisement which appeared for the
first time that morning, had given a list of the persons to whom Pope's
letters were addressed, and among the names were those of the Earl of
Halifax and the Earl of Burlington. To print letters to lords was no
offence. It was necessary that there should be letters from them, and of
this there was no other indication than that the list of names was
followed by the words,--"with the respective answers of each
correspondent."[40] Curll asserted that the advertisement came to him
through Smythe,[41] and the proceedings founded upon it in the hour that
it issued wet from the press were, as Johnson states, instigated by
Pope, "who attended to stimulate the resentment of his friends."[42] If
he had never set eyes upon the book before it was published, curiosity
would still have prompted him to turn over the leaves, and he must
immediately have discovered that it did not contain a single letter from
a peer. The wording of the advertisement may, therefore, be suspected to
have been devised by him to afford a colour for what he must have known
was a groundless prosecution. A committee was appointed to investigate
the complaint. It met on the 14th of May, and the case would have ended
as soon as it was begun, if Pope's spokesman, Lord Hay, who resided at
Twickenham, and was one of his associates, had not adduced from a letter
to Jervas a passage which he alleged to be a reflection on Lord
Burlington. But the person who furnished the work to Curll had, by an
elaborate device, provided against a charge which no one except its
contriver could have foreseen. The fifty copies, which were sold on the
morning of t